Four Stories

by Rachel Ingalls

Rachel Ingalls was a writer who did not seek out the spotlight, but found it not at all unpleasant when at last it came. Beyond a small circle of loyal friends and regular visits to Virginia to see her family, Ingalls lived a fairly reclusive existence after her move from the U.S. to the U.K. in 1965. “Ingalls writes fables whose unadorned sentences belie their irreducible strangeness.” Wrote Lidija Haas in The New Yorker; in the same piece she described Ingalls as “unjustly neglected.”

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Rachel Ingalls grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She held various jobs, from theatre dresser and librarian to publisher’s reader. She was a confirmed radio and film addict and started living in London in 1965. She authored several works of fiction—most notably Mrs. Caliban—published in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

Reviews

[Sophy H · Rating 2 out of 5]

A curious little set of stories. Some of them seem a little twee in their writing (such as I See a Long Journey) with whiney, wimpy, weak women characters who become annoying!! The male characters in another of the 4 stories are then overly aggressive, grrr manly types which is equally annoying! I don't know, each of these stories started out with real promise and had something of the "Tales of the Unexpected" about them, but then fizzled out into a pile of meh! They seem dated, misplaced and possibly written by someone who had taken a lot of drugs! I got this book in a second hand bookshop and fortunately only paid £1 for it! Of that I am very glad.

[Esma Asalıoğlu · Rating 1 out of 5]

This might be the most boring book I've ever read. It simply did not engage my interest. The ending of every story was so illogical, and foreseeable. Not sure how I made it all the way through.