Mrs. Caliban

Author: Rachel Ingalls
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 081122709X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 115

Book Description
Now back in print, Mrs. Caliban is “totally unforgettable” (The New York Times Book Review) and “something of a miracle” (The New Yorker) 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.

The Shutter of Snow

Author: Emily Holmes Coleman
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
ISBN: 9781564781475
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Book Description
In a prose form as startling as its content, ?"The Shutter of Snow"?portrays the post-partum psychosis of Marthe Gail, who after giving birth to her son, is committed to an insane asylum. Believing herself to be God, she maneuvers through an institutional world that is both sad and terrifying, echoing the worlds of?"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"?and?"The Snake Pit." Based upon the author's own experience after the birth of her son in 1924, "The Shutter of Snow" retains all the energy it had when first published in 1930.

Binstead's Safari

Author: Rachel Ingalls
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
Academic anthropologist Stan Binstead is headed off to East Africa on sabbatical. Adulterous by nature, he's irked when his wife Millie asks to accompany him. But as the couple pass through London the balance of power in their marriage begins, strangely, to shift - a transformation that becomes yet more pronounced on safari.

They

Author: Kay Dick
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1946022284
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Book Description
A dark, dystopian portrait of artists struggling to resist violent suppression—“queer, English, a masterpiece.” (Hilton Als) Set amid the rolling hills and the sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex, this disquieting novel depicts an England in which bland conformity is the terrifying order of the day. Violent gangs roam the country destroying art and culture and brutalizing those who resist the purge. As the menacing “They” creep ever closer, a loosely connected band of dissidents attempt to evade the chilling mobs, but it’s only a matter of time until their luck runs out. Winner of the 1977 South-East Arts Literature Prize, Kay Dick’s They is an uncanny and prescient vision of a world hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4

Author: Sue Townsend
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060533994
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
Adrian Mole's first love, Pandora, has left him; a neighbor, Mr. Lucas, appears to be seducing his mother (and what does that mean for his father?); the BBC refuses to publish his poetry; and his dog swallowed the tree off the Christmas cake. "Why" indeed.

Treasure Island!!!

Author: Sara Levine
Publisher: Europa Editions
ISBN: 1609459148
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
A young slacker decides to live her life according to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure: “A rollicking tale, shameless, funny and intelligent” (The New York Times). When a college graduate with a history of hapless jobs (ice cream scooper, gift wrapper, laziest ever part-time clerk at The Pet Library) reads Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island, she is dumbstruck by the timid design of her life. When had she ever dreamed a scheme? When had she ever done a foolish, overbold act? When had she ever, like Jim Hawkins, broken from her friends, raced for the beach, stolen a boat, killed a man, and eliminated an obstacle that stood in the way of her getting a hunk of gold? Convinced that Stevenson’s book is cosmically intended for her, she redesigns her life according to its Core Values: boldness, resolution, independence, and horn-blowing. Accompanied by her mother, her sister, and a hostile Amazon parrot that refuses to follow the script, our heroine embarks on a domestic adventure more frightening than anything she’d originally planned. Treasure Island!!! is the story of a ferocious obsession, told by an original voice—“insane, hilarious, and irreverent” (Alice Sebold). “Highly original . . . will keep you entertained in spite of (or more accurately, because of) its toxic narrator.” —Library Journal “A hoot.” —Kirkus Reviews

Palace of the Peacock (Faber Editions)

Author: Wilson Harris
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571368050
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 141

Book Description
The visionary masterpiece, tracing a riverboat crew's dreamlike jungle voyage ... 'My new all time favourite book ... A magnificent, breathtaking and terrifying novel.' T sitsi Dangarembga 'An exhilarating experience ... Makes visions real and reality visions ... Genius.' Jamaica Kincaid 'A masterpiece: I love this book for its language, adventure and wisdoms.' Monique Roffey 'Revel in the inviolate, ever-deepening mystery of Wilson Harris's work.' Jeet Thayil 'The Guyanese William Blake . Such poetic intensity.' Angela Carter I dreamt I awoke with one dead seeing eye and one living closed eye ... A crew of men are embarking on a voyage up a turbulent river through the rainforests of Guyana. Their domineering leader, Donne, is the spirit of a conquistador, obsessed with hunting for a mysterious woman and exploiting indigenous people as plantation labour. But their expedition is plagued by tragedies, haunted by drowned ghosts: spectres of the crew themselves, inhabiting a blurred shadowland between life and death. As their journey into the interior - their own hearts of darkness - deepens, it assumes a spiritual dimension, guiding them towards a new destination: the Palace of the Peacock ... A modernist fever dream; prose poem; modern myth; elegy to victims of colonial conquest: Wilson Harris' masterpiece has defied definition for over sixty years, and is reissued for a new generation of readers. 'One of the great originals ... Visionary ... Dazzlingly illuminating.' Guardian 'Amazing ... Masterly ... Near-miraculous.' Observer 'Staggering ... Both brilliant and terrifying.' The Times 'The most inimitable [writer] produced in the English-speaking Caribbean.' Fred D'Aguiar 'Extraordinary ... Courageous and visionary ... It speaks to us in tongues.' Pauline Melville

Lightning Rods

Author: Helen DeWitt
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811219526
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
The long-awaited second novel by the author of “arguably the most exciting debut novel of the decade: The Last Samurai.” (Sam Anderson, New York). “All I want is to be a success. That’s all I ask.” Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat 126 pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet for his frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies, and at last strikes gold. His brainstorm, Lightning Rods, Inc., will take Joe to the very top — and to the very heart of corporate insanity — with an outrageous solution to the spectre of sexual harassment in the modern office. An uproarious, hard-boiled modern fable of corporate life, sex, and race in America, Helen DeWitt’s Lightning Rods brims with the satiric energy of Nathanael West and the philosophic import of an Aristophanic comedy of ideas. Her wild yarn is second cousin to the spirit of Mel Brooks and the hilarious reality-blurring of Being John Malkovich. Dewitt continues to take the novel into new realms of storytelling — as the timeliness of Lightning Rods crosses over into timelessness.

ORDEAL OF GILBERT PINFOLD

Author: Evelyn Waugh
Publisher: Alien Ebooks
ISBN: 1667623753
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Book Description
A successful, middle-aged novelist with a case of 'bad nerves,' Gilbert Pinfold embarks on a recuperative trip to Ceylon. Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, loud revival meetings. He can only infer that somewhere concealed in his room an erratic public-address system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship. And then, instead of just sounds, he hears voices. But they are not just any voices. These voices are talking, in the most frightening intimate way, about him!

Mrs Caliban (Faber Editions)

Author: Rachel Ingalls
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571367992
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Book Description
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'Kind of weird and cool. ' Irvine Welsh''Genius ... A broadcast from a stranger and more dazzling dimension.' Patricia Lockwood'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?'*****