Search results for ""Author Rachel Ingalls""

After getting a haircut in London and a few new outfits (“she bought two pairs of shoes and began to enjoy herself”), Millie, the neglected American wife of an academic pill, is transformed—and, upon arrival in Africa, falls into the perfect affair. Binstead’s Safari unfolds the fractured fairy tale of the rebirth of a drab, insecure woman as a fiercely alive, fearless beauty. “Life was too short to waste time trying to find excuses for not doing the things you really wanted to do,” Millie realizes, helping herself to love and joy. The husband is astonished—everyone adores the new Millie. She can’t put a foot wrong, and as they move deeper into Africa in search of lion myths for his book, “excitement and pleasure carried her upwards as on a tide.” Mysteries abound, but in the hands of Rachel Ingalls, the ultimate master of the curveball, Millie’s resurrection seems perfectly natural: caterpillar to butterfly. “Only now had she found her life”—and also her destiny, which may, this being Ingalls, take the form of a Lion God.

Read more less

Introduced by Patricia Lockwood: Gothic tales from the mistress of the weird behind frogman-romance Mrs Caliban for fans of Shirley Jackson, Lucia Berlin and Patricia Highsmith.'Wonderful.' Margaret Atwood'Genius.' Patricia Lockwood'Remarkable.' Joseph Heller'Perfect.' Max Porter''Immensely skillful'. Ursula K. Le Guin'Tender, erotic, singular.' Carmen Maria Machado'Still outpaces, out-weirds, and out-romances anything today.' Marlon James'One of the greatest short story writers we have.' The Times'You are in masterly hands as Ingalls lures you into a swamp of violence and magic.' Sunday TimesAfter a one-night-stand with the Angel Gabriel, a monk is transformed into a pregnant woman.Lost in the fog, two visitors are lured into a ruined candlelit mansion.A wife confiscates her husband's homemade sex doll, only to demand her own.Great-aunts warn of the deadly skin of the pearlkillers.Rachel Ingalls' incomparable novellas are masterpieces: surrealist, subversive, tragicomic. Prepare to meet what lurks beneath .'Macabre, fantastic and haunting . . . One of the most brilliant practitioners of American Gothic since Poe . . . Read her at your peril.' Independent'Fables whose unadorned sentences belie their irreducible strangeness . . . In her vision of intimacy and interdependence, you're simply not safe until everybody else is dead . . . Brilliant.' New Yorker'Resists definition . . . Her work combines subtlety and horror, magic and stark realism, Greek tragedy and happily-ever-afters . . . Rare and fine. ' Guardian'Idiosyncratic, haunting, masterly . . . A modern fabulist making myths which explode into strangeness.' Observer

Read more less

In the Act begins: “As long as Helen was attending her adult education classes twice a week, everything worked out fine: Edgar could have a completely quiet house for his work, or his thinking, or whatever it was.” In Rachel Ingall’s blissfully deranged novella, the “whatever it was” her husband’s been up to in his attic laboratory turns out to be inventing a new form of infidelity. Initially Helen, before she uncovers the truth, only gently tries to assert her right to be in her own home. But one morning, grapefruit is the last straw: “He read through his newspaper conscientiously, withdrawing his attention from it for only a few seconds to tell her that she hadn’t cut all the segments entirely free in his grapefruit—he’d hit exactly four that were still attached. She knew, he said, how that kind of thing annoyed him.” While Edgar keeps his lab locked, Helen secretly has a key, and what she finds in the attic shocks her into action and propels In the Act into heights of madcap black comedy even beyond Ingalls’s usual stratosphere.

Read more less

In this collection of five stories by a great short story writer, prototypes from the ancient world cast a shadow over our age. Cupid and Psyche, Penelope, Oedipus, Icarus and Odysseus inhabit the consciousness of characters who wrestle with betrayal, sacrifice, family conflict and war. Each story poses the same questions: what do people really believe in, where can they put their trust, and why do they continue to hope? Days Like Today is a stunning volume by a true artist and a quite remarkable talent.

Read more less

The amphibious cult classic: a magical tale of a suburban housewife's affair with a frogman ...'Disturbing but seductive ... Wonderful.' Margaret Atwood'Perfect.' Max Porter'Still outpaces, out-weirds, and out-romances anything today.' Marlon James'A feminist masterpiece: tender, erotic, singular.' Carmen Maria Machado''Genius ... A broadcast from a stranger and more dazzling dimension.' Patricia Lockwood'Kind of weird and cool. ' Irvine Welsh'Genius ... Like Revolutionary Road written by Franz Kafka ... Exquisite.' The Times'Incredibly liberates readers from the awfulness of convention to a state where weirdness and otherness are beautiful.' Sarah Hall'A devastating fable of mythic proportions ... Wondrously peculiar.' Irenosen Okojie (foreword)Dorothy is a grieving housewife in the Californian suburbs; her husband is unfaithful, but they are too unhappy to get a divorce. One day, she is doing chores when she hears strange voices on the radio announcing that a green-skinned sea monster has escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research - but little does she expect him to arrive in her kitchen. Muscular, vegetarian, sexually magnetic, Larry the frogman is a revelation - and their passionate affair takes them on a journey beyond their wildest dreams ... Rachel Ingalls's Mrs Caliban is a bittersweet fable, a subversive fairy tale, as magical today as it was four decades ago. 'A miracle . A perfect novel.' New Yorker'Every one of its 125 pages is perfect ... Clear a Saturday, please, and read it in a single sitting.' Harper'sWhat Readers Are Saying:'Maybe the most gorgeous, lyrical book ever written'*****'A fantastic wee novel, strange and brilliant, and absolutely the inspiration for The Shape of Water.'*****'Wonderful, sharp minimal prose offers big truths. Superb - brilliant, in fact.'*****'Absolutely incredible. It's weird, funny, and heartbreaking, like a Richard Yates novel except with lizardman sex.'*****'One of the best tongue-in-cheek social satires that I've ever read. It delves into gender politics. It takes a long, hard look at mental health. It addresses female sexual freedom and agency. It asks the reader to examine what it means to be human ... Genius.'*****'Really brilliant: a deconstruction of suburbia by way of monster movies that examines sad realities with hilarious verve ... Sometimes you need a sexy frog person to break you out of the ties that bind. '*****'Hooked me so deeply I picked it up and finished it the same night ... Beautiful ... Will stay with me.'*****'What the hell just happened?'*****

Read more less

In the quiet suburbs, while Dorothy is doing chores and waiting for her husband to come home from work, not in the least anticipating romance, she hears a strange radio announcement about a monster who has just escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research… Reviewers have compared Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs. Caliban to King Kong, Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, the films of David Lynch, Beauty and the Beast, The Wizard of Oz, E.T., Richard Yates’s domestic realism, B-horror movies, and the fairy tales of Angela Carter—how such a short novel could contain all of these disparate elements is a testament to its startling and singular charm.

Read more less