You know how sometimes, when you are doing housework to distract yourself from your crumbling marriage, a 6’11” Frogman named Larry escapes from a scientific institute and comes to your house for good food and better sex?
No? Well, I suppose it isn’t an every day situation for all, but it’s certainly Dorothy’s new normal!
“but Cait, isn’t this just The Shape of Water?” NOPE!
It predates TSOW, having been first published in 1982, and not all aquatic lovers are created equally! While it is impossible to escape all of the Del Toro vibes, what I felt most connected to while reading this sassy little book went outside of “traditional” romantic monsters.
I felt that this novella is a “grown-up” read for kids who grew up on Daniel Pinkwater: b-movie madness, extremely strange friends, late-night horror hallucinations, and a quest to belong pepper his work AND Mrs. Caliban.
The film that came up in my mind, far more often than TSOW, was 2013’s Her. Both have lonely protagonists falling for total outsiders- outsiders who are beyond the realm of “human”. In Her, we have an AI and in Mrs. Caliban we have the afore-mentioned Larry. In both instances, the protagonists struggle to teach and explain their world to their partners, and in both cases the partners outlearn, outpace, and outgrow them in turn. The pieces where Dorothy is trying to explain concepts like “market value” and why people dance are a hoot.
There is, like many love stories, a good deal of tragedy folded into the few pages of this novella- but it is also filled to the gills (I cannot help myself) with acid-sharp humor and swoon-worthy romance.
You know what they say: the seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake!
