Daniel Handler

Daniel Handler discusses Three Masquerades, a collection of novellas by Rachel Ingalls. Daniel Handler assembled this collection for Pharos Editions, a press that is dedicated to bringing to light out-of-print, lost or rare books of distinction.

Praise for Rachel Ingalls

So deft and austere in its prose, so drolly casual in its fantasy… – John Updike 

Shortly after beginning each of the novellas in this remarkable collection, I was seized with a haunting conviction that I was reading works I would not easily forget. – Joseph Heller

Rachel Ingalls ‘ elegantly written tales mix reality and fantasy in surprising ways, casting a dark light on the conventions of our lives, our ideas about marriage, youth and age… she deserves to be as well-known in America as she is in England.”  —Alison Laurie

About Three Masquerades

“I See a Long Journey” and “On Ice,” novellas that Mr. Handler considers basically perfect, originally appeared with a third, “Blessed Art Though,” a story that he considers to be in an entirely different tone. He felt that “Friends in the Country” from Ms. Ingalls later collection, “The End of a Tragedy,” was a more natural companion to the two earlier works. The author happily agreed.

“I See a Long Journey” introduces us to Flora who is induced by her husband, James, to take a vacation only because his chauffeur Michael, custodian of their persons and their purse, will accompany them. Things, as they so often do in Ingalls world, will go appalling awry.  “Friends in the Country” wherein a young couple drive outside of London for a Friday dinner and find themselves trapped for the weekend in a manner that surpasses Stephen King, if not in outright horror then certainly in subtlety and suggestiveness. “On Ice” finds Beverley with her fiance at an elegant hotel where she is introduced to a grande dame whose funeral Beverley’s convinced she had witnessed 10 years before.