Days Like Today

'[Rachel Ingalls'] work combines subtlety and horror, magic and stark realism, Greek tragedy and happily-ever-afters. Her characters are true to life even as they embody classical archetypes - Icarus, Odysseus, Psyche, people wandering too long, striving too far, watching their loved ones by faint lights. In Days Like Today [2000], her tenth volume of fiction, Ingalls brings together five works linked by war and fate... Ranging in length from a dozen to a hundred pages, some of the pieces have the elemental focus of short stories, others the psychological depth of novels... together they constitute something rare and fine... Character is Ingalls's greatest strength... Her people are four-dimensional, rich in pasts and hopes as well as physicality. Ingalls documents truths that are stranger than fiction, and it is this that makes Days Like Today a remarkable collection.' Tobias Hill, Guardian

Rachel Ingalls was born in Boston in 1940. She spent time in Germany before studying at Radcliffe College, and moved to England in 1965, where she lived for the rest of her life. Her debut novel, Theft (1970), won the Authors' Club First Novel Award, and her novella Mrs Caliban (1982) was named one of the 20 best American novels since World War Two by the British Book Marketing Council. Over half a century, Ingalls wrote 11 story collections and novellas - all published by Faber - to great acclaim, but remains relatively unknown. She died in 2019 after a revival of interest in her work.