A review by applesodaperson
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

emotional mysterious reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This was definitely a weird book. It reminded me a lot of the Shape of Water, even though I've never even seen that movie. I was also a bit shocked at how old this book is, because I can totally see this having been written right now.
I really liked the fish guy actually. He had a very matter of fact personality, and was just the right amount of unexplained and mysterious. This book was also the perfect length and was better being a short book. The sort of ambiguous ending worked well too, because you never really find out if the fish guy
makes it back to his people. Also, it was absolutely wild that both the best friend and the best friend's daughter were having an ongoing affair with the main character's husband. I totally called that plot twist early on.

There were definitely a lot of themes around grief in this book. When it starts, the main character is grieving the death of her child, which is causing the gulf between her and her husband.
And then later, the fish guy kills the main character's best friend's son. And that brought up a really interesting ethical discussion about why the main character is treating the friend's son's death differently then if he was a stranger.

Overall, this book was really good and very surreal, but I feel like there was some larger metaphor that i was not understanding. Like the fish guy was supposed to symbolize something deeper, but I just either missed it or didn't have the media literacy skills to decipher it.
Listened to on Libby.
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