Mrs. Caliban
Published in 1982, Mrs. Caliban is a short novel by American writer Rachel Ingalls. Dorothy is a lonely Los Angeles housewife mourning the death of a child and the slow death of her marriage when a six foot amphibian named Larry, the subject of secret government experiments, escapes from a research facility and finds his way into her kitchen. Their unlikely romance unfolds against a backdrop of suburban routine, soap operas, and quiet despair. Ingalls writes the relationship with deadpan sincerity, treating its absurdity as the natural extension of Dorothy's grief and disappointment. Long out of print, the book was rediscovered in the 2010s after the British Book Marketing Council had earlier named it one of the great postwar American novels. It is often shelved as a small classic of feminist surrealism and a precursor to films such as The Shape of Water.
What you might want to know about Mrs. Caliban
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A grieving suburban housewife falls in love with a giant amphibian creature who has escaped from a government lab.
Neither exactly; it reads as a feminist surrealist novel with elements of both.
Guillermo del Toro has acknowledged the comparison, though he says his film was developed independently.
Mrs. Caliban was written by Rachel Ingalls.
Mrs. Caliban is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.