3.5
In the Act
ByPublisher Description
From Rachel Ingalls, the author of Mrs. Caliban, another delicious, highly improbable, and hilariously believable tale of a wife’s scorched-earth rebellion
In the Act begins: “As long as Helen was attending her adult education classes twice a week, everything worked out fine: Edgar could have a completely quiet house for his work, or his thinking, or whatever it was.” In Rachel Ingall’s blissfully deranged novella, the “whatever it was” her husband’s been up to in his attic laboratory turns out to be inventing a new form of infidelity. Initially Helen, before she uncovers the truth, only gently tries to assert her right to be in her own home. But one morning, grapefruit is the last straw: “He read through his newspaper conscientiously, withdrawing his attention from it for only a few seconds to tell her that she hadn’t cut all the segments entirely free in his grapefruit—he’d hit exactly four that were still attached. She knew, he said, how that kind of thing annoyed him.” While Edgar keeps his lab locked, Helen secretly has a key, and what she finds in the attic shocks her into action and propels In the Act into heights of madcap black comedy even beyond Ingalls’s usual stratosphere.Download the free Fable app
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities36 Reviews
3.5
Claire Novel
Created 8 days agoShare
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“They don’t want a real woman who has needs, flaws, and a voice. They want someone pliant, unchanging, perfect. Someone who’s never been loved before, so they can be the first and only, because that somehow makes her more valuable.
This book captures perfectly that classic image: the lone, victimized woman, beleaguered by selfish men. It hit a deep fear of being in a relationship where a man thinks he’s my savior. The kind who believes he “rescued” me from a lonely solitary life, and because of that, I somehow owe him everything.
Men’s selfishness drive them to always want more. They chase the “perfect girl”, but she doesn’t exist. She’s a fantasy created through AI, robots, fiction etc. but she’s never real. Men can’t create a real woman; they only copy her, distort her, and they’re always wrong. And yet, they still fall “in love” with her this ideal they built in their heads.
Anyway, I loved this book. It’s sharp, funny, and on point it made me laugh and cringe at the same time. A great read.”Natalie
Created 14 days agoShare
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Melissa Darcey Hall
Created 3 months agoShare
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evilalice
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Julian Ranz
Created 5 months agoShare
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