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Hausfrau cover art

Hausfrau

Written by: Jill Alexander Essbaum
Narrated by: Mozhan Marno
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Publisher's Summary

An extraordinary debut literary pause-resister with echoes of Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.

Anna Benz lives in comfort and affluence with her husband and three young children in Dietlikon, a picture-perfect suburb of Zurich. Anna, an American expat, has chosen this life far from home; but despite its tranquility and order, inside she is falling apart.

Feeling adrift and unable to connect with her husband or his family; with the fellow expatriates who try to befriend her; or even, increasingly, her own thoughts and emotions, Anna attempts to assert her agency in the only way that makes sense to her: by engaging in short-lived but intense sexual affairs.

But adultery, too, has its own morality, and when Anna finds herself crossing a line, she will set off a terrible chain of events that will end in unspeakable tragedy. As her life crashes down around her, Anna must then discover where one must go when there is no going back....

©2015 Jill Alexander Essbaum (P)2015 Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

Critic Reviews

“A tense novel about morality, fidelity and identity.” (Elle Magazine)
“This slow-burning literary novel of marital disintegration will leave you in bits. It’s a bleak, but beautiful read, with echoes of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.” (Glamour Magazine)
“It’s the book that will have everyone talking… The author spent unhappy years in Switzerland and the sense of alienation in the book rings true. By the end you might like Anna a little more – and you’ll certainly have a lot to think about.” (Cosmo Magazine)
“I read this in one sitting, transfixed by this insightful and shocking portrait of a woman on the edge.” (Woman & Home)
"To the steaminess of EL James’s erotic classic, it adds the marital dysfunction of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and the commuter neuroses of Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train. There won’t be a sun lounger or beach bag without it this summer.’ (Laura Freeman, Sunday Telegraph)

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Who she had loved and didn’t love. But had loved.

loved it .. narration was impressive. modern tale of different versions of love .. quite captivating.

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An un apologetically 'interior 'novel

Not a love story . But a novel that maps out the interior life of an adulteress I.e Her slow descent into immorality as she flips from one short stinted affair to the next . Much of the novel also revolves around her domestic life . There are many conversations with other characters but my favourite chapters were the main character's (she's no protagonist ) inner monologues . Don't let my bleak summary dissuade you from reading/listening to it . It's an excellent novel with many paragraphs reading like stanzas of well crafted poetry. Given the author's training as a poet this is not surprising .

I decided to give this a go as I'd loved the narrator Mozhan Marno who'd also read aloud a Wonder Woman Audio book . Her regal voice suits this novel just as well as it did the former .

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