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書籍專區 文學館 小說/散文 Mrs Caliban (Faber Editions)

Mrs Caliban (Faber Editions)

作者:Ingalls, Rachel

出版社:Faber & Faber

年份:2021

ISBN:9780571367986

書號:20303853

裝訂:平裝

定價:$480

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內容簡介

當收音機傳來海怪逃出海洋學研究室的新聞時,孤獨的家庭主婦Dorothy正在繼續她一成不變的生活裡,那些最枯燥瑣碎、單調乏味的家事。

 

孰料接下來,她的廚房裡出現了一位高大壯碩,莫名地充滿吸引力,而且還吃素—的綠膚青蛙人。

 

蛙人Larry的到來,是Dorothy最狂野的夢,為她乏善可陳的生活與因丈夫不忠導致的痛苦婚姻帶來了全新面貌。兩人的情感交匯,浪漫纖細又充滿激情,也讓Dorothy找回了以往的自己及對生活的熱情,不過現實仍舊殘酷,道德的壓力、外界的評判、Larry隨時會被抓回去的危機,這段難以被接受的戀情,究竟會如何收場?

 

出版於1982年,作者Rachel Ingalls以荒誕的人物與情節,幽默探討了人與人性的複雜與多面,也狠狠挖苦了彼時(當然,許多描述仍適用於現今)社會的性別與婚姻角色框架。

 
As heard on BBC Radio 4''s ''A Good Read: 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 Calibanis a bittersweet fable, a subversive fairy tale, as magical today as it was four decades ago.
 
作者介紹
Rachel Ingalls was born in Boston in 1940. She dropped out of school and spent time in Germany before studying at Radcliffe College and then moving to Britain in 1965, where she lived for the rest of her life. Over half a century Ingalls wrote eleven celebrated story collections and novellas, all published by Faber. Her debut novel, Theft (1970), won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and her 1982 novella, Mrs Caliban, was named by the British Book Marketing Council as one of the greatest American novels since World War II – to her surprise. A cult classic, it has been described as 'genius; a broadcast from a stranger and more dazzling dimension' (Patricia Lockwood); 'a feminist masterpiece' (Carmen Maria Machado); 'its own terrible, brilliant reality' (Sarah Hall); 'immensely skillful' (Ursula K. Le Guin); and still 'outpac[ing], out-weird[ing], and out-romanc[ing] anything today' (Marlon James). Ingalls died in 2019 in London.