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nearfutures's review against another edition
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Child death, Miscarriage, Murder, and Car accident
applesodaperson's review against another edition
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 guymakes 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.
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
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content
Minor: Child death and Violence
jlfields925's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Miscarriage, Animal cruelty, Confinement, Grief, Domestic abuse, Car accident, and Child death
vexatiousbird's review against another edition
funny
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
It has a kind of understated charm - interesting to take a monster and deposit him into the most mundane domestic setting.
But it can also be a bit tedious reading through those mundane parts. It is also so understated that sometimes things don’t make a lot of sense, like why a housewife and a creature who walked into her house one day are suddenly making love without more than the tiniest hint of sexual tension leading up to it. There is also no detail at all for it, even any mention of how she feels about getting physical with a sea creature or cheating on her husband, it just says they make love and that’s that, moving on without comment.
It suddenly gets very exciting near the end, and then it’s just sad and a little confusing. Up til then it was very slow and I probably would have dropped it if it wasn’t so short.
I can sense some layers of meaning here that I don’t fully grasp, but I’m not intrigued enough to dig further into it.
But it can also be a bit tedious reading through those mundane parts. It is also so understated that sometimes things don’t make a lot of sense, like why a housewife and a creature who walked into her house one day are suddenly making love without more than the tiniest hint of sexual tension leading up to it. There is also no detail at all for it, even any mention of how she feels about getting physical with a sea creature or cheating on her husband, it just says they make love and that’s that, moving on without comment.
It suddenly gets very exciting near the end, and then it’s just sad and a little confusing. Up til then it was very slow and I probably would have dropped it if it wasn’t so short.
I can sense some layers of meaning here that I don’t fully grasp, but I’m not intrigued enough to dig further into it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity
Moderate: Child death and Car accident
Minor: Violence
another_dahlia's review against another edition
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Car accident and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Death, Forced institutionalization, Alcoholism, Child death, Confinement, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Murder, Torture, Violence, and Miscarriage
mabelsyrup's review against another edition
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Mrs Caliban was a book that surprised me but also it left me feeling like it didn’t deserve it, i went into this expecting something that would remind me of The Shape of Water; a love story that’s bizarre and epic and heartwarming and a bit unhinged. While I did get some of those feelings out of it, I wanted a lot more, maybe it's my fault for expecting so much from a book that doesn’t even get to 150 pages idk.
I did enjoy reading Dorothy’s thoughts and the more I think about it the book is clear on the fact that this love affair she’s having is just a hallucination, a creation her brain made to help her cope with loneliness, feeling like she has no purpose and like her world is over, which when I say it like that it’s pretty fvcked up how her brain, even after creating this beautiful dream scenario, will still remind her that she IS all alone in the end. Larry was a lovely lover tho, even if he wasn’t real.
Some of the writing fell a bit flat for me, and every time she went over to Estelle’s house it just dragged onnn for no reason imo; they’d be talking about the most random things and it’s supposed to make you feel connected to these ladies and their friendship but it didn’t work for me. Regardless I enjoyed my time with it and even tho it wasn’t the romance I was expecting i’m glad i read it.
“Dorothy would lean her head against the wall and seem to herself to be no longer living because no longer a part of any world in which love was possible.”
“No matter how much you loved someone, there was a limit to the amount of crying you could stand hearing.”
“She tried to imagine what his world could be like. Perhaps it was like a child floating in its mother’s womb and hearing her voice all around him.”
“Dorothy still felt like a teenager. At the time when her hope and youth and adventurousness had left her, she had believed herself cheated of those early years when nothing had happened to her, although it might have. Later still, she realized that if she had made an effort, she herself could have made things happen. But now, it didn’t matter. Here she was.”
“the whole idea of medicine had made her a victim. To her it had not brought healing. It had brought death where she was sure death had been avoidable.”
“one wave covering another like the knitting of threads, like the begetting of revenges, betrayals, memories, regrets. And always it made a musical, murmuring sound, a language as definite as speech.”
I did enjoy reading Dorothy’s thoughts and the more I think about it the book is clear on the fact that this love affair she’s having is just a hallucination, a creation her brain made to help her cope with loneliness, feeling like she has no purpose and like her world is over, which when I say it like that it’s pretty fvcked up how her brain, even after creating this beautiful dream scenario, will still remind her that she IS all alone in the end. Larry was a lovely lover tho, even if he wasn’t real.
Some of the writing fell a bit flat for me, and every time she went over to Estelle’s house it just dragged onnn for no reason imo; they’d be talking about the most random things and it’s supposed to make you feel connected to these ladies and their friendship but it didn’t work for me. Regardless I enjoyed my time with it and even tho it wasn’t the romance I was expecting i’m glad i read it.
“Dorothy would lean her head against the wall and seem to herself to be no longer living because no longer a part of any world in which love was possible.”
“No matter how much you loved someone, there was a limit to the amount of crying you could stand hearing.”
“She tried to imagine what his world could be like. Perhaps it was like a child floating in its mother’s womb and hearing her voice all around him.”
“Dorothy still felt like a teenager. At the time when her hope and youth and adventurousness had left her, she had believed herself cheated of those early years when nothing had happened to her, although it might have. Later still, she realized that if she had made an effort, she herself could have made things happen. But now, it didn’t matter. Here she was.”
“the whole idea of medicine had made her a victim. To her it had not brought healing. It had brought death where she was sure death had been avoidable.”
“one wave covering another like the knitting of threads, like the begetting of revenges, betrayals, memories, regrets. And always it made a musical, murmuring sound, a language as definite as speech.”
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal death and Child death
livs_getting_bookish's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Wow. For a book about a frogman and a depressed housewife engrossed in a passionate love affair, I did not see the ending coming.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Pedophilia and Child death
natafire's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death
m_liz's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity and Child death
Minor: Sexual content
mermaidsherbet's review against another edition
emotional
funny
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal death, Child death, Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Toxic friendship, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Car accident, Death, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Forced institutionalization, Gore, Grief, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Murder, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Rape, Toxic relationship, and Violence