My Husband: A Novel

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She’ loves Mondays. People have told her that loving Mondays is a brainiac thing— that only nerds are happy when the weekend is over. About the book:At forty years old, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she's never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated. After all, would a truly infatuated man ever let go of his wife's hand when they're sitting on the couch together? From the outside, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she's never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated.

Irresistible. . . . Thrilling. . . . Ramadan's exacting translation holds the reader in her grip. . . . A bold and memorable first outing.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review) Over analyzing everything that HE says and does, she will punish him in both passive aggressive ways when appropriate, and in ways more unforgivable and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was like this when the two married, or if had perhaps been a slow descent into madness over the fifteen years of their union. He has always admired how rigorously I note the words I need for my translations in my small notebooks. I have a dozen of them. The red notebook is for terms related to politics and societal debates, the blue one is for terms related to nature and the environment. (That one’s been written in the most; in particular it contains the names of climbing plants in English gardens and the different species of oak trees). They are all placed side by side on the shelf above my desk, but today I notice that one of them has disappeared. I look everywhere for my yellow notebook, which contains vocabulary related to medicine and the history of the sciences, in vain. As I read more and more of this book it reminded me of those men youtubers/tiktokers that say women should live for men. These are the women they want. Well sans the cheating. At forty years old, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she's never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated. After all, would a truly infatuated man ever let go of his wife's hand when they're sitting on the couch together?Irrémédiablement attirée par cette couverture qui présente une sorte de Bree Van De Kamp, j'ai lu ce roman presque d'un coup (en deux jours en réalité), totalement happée par un récit qui n'a absolument rien d'une "irrésistible drôlerie" comme le dit la quatrième de couverture... Ventura's cleverly constructed, one-sided portrait of a marriage delivers a breathtaking conclusion that is as unexpected as it is deviously brilliant.” - Shelf Awareness The winner of France’s First Novel Prize in 2021, My Husband builds on the premise of hits like Gone Girl and Fates and Furies—how well can you really know your spouse?—and adds the tension and creepy obsession of You. The result is an irresistible read—compelling, tense, and engaging, infused with sly subversive humor, and told in an utterly original voice that makes it unforgettable. A] wry, psychologically complex debut . . . This riveting emotional thriller requires serious willpower to not devour in a single sitting.”— Oprah Daily

Then, one day, ‘,She’ left a note on the pillow and returned to the man who would become her husband. The Narrator is like an extreme version of those people who live their lives by just reading self help articles online, and she quite literally follows them to a T. It's equally hilarious and heartbreaking to see how insecure she is and have these insecurities brought to life by her equally conniving husband. At the same time, it's an also a compelling portrait of power imbalances within a marriage and the ways in which men grind down women in an effort to boost their own egos or exert control over their wives. Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage meets Ruth Rendell. . . . My Husband possesses a dark, clinical and raspy humor. With a very well done final twist, as unpredictable as it is Machiavellian, you won’t want to read this vaudeville just once." — Le Nouvel Obs Ramadan’s exacting translation holds the reader in her grip, and what makes this so thrilling is not just the narrator’s surprising ruthlessness but how Ventura causes the reader to repeatedly change their mind about who’s to blame for the messed up marriage all the way to the explosive ending. It’s a bold and memorable first outing."

Living inside this woman’s head was both exhausting and fascinating. Her obsession with her husband, which swings from passion and love to deep revulsion and resentment depending on the day of the week and the color of the day, put me through all the moods. She is utterly fixated and codependent on him and lives to please (and punish) him. Her inner monologue and thought processes about whether her husband loves her, is cheating on her, wants to divorce her, or has discovered her secrets, were almost tipped over the edge into paranoia. For example, she agonizes over his love for their children and friends because spreading his love dilutes his love towards her; she is horrified by his romantic belief of falling more in love daily because it means he doesn’t love her fully at her present. J'ai été séduite d'entrée de jeu par les descriptions de la vie domestique de la narratrice - que voulez-vous, j'adore m'imaginer les maisons des autres, alors une belle maison bourgeoise, une vie de prof d'anglais/traductrice... (ce qui d'ailleurs aurait pu être ma vie si je n'avais pas dévié de cet objectif après mes études) Mais très vite, le malaise arrive : la passion folle, calculée, de la narratrice effraie, plus qu'elle ne donne envie. It's a wild read with some inventive prose and turns of phrases that left my Kindle copy absolutely marked up from all the highlighting I was doing. Especially the sex scenes and the descriptions of sex are absolutely unique and profound, and singular to Maud Ventura and the compelling, tension filled voice she created with My Husband.

SHE* . . . is OBSESSED……with love for her husband….[yet is also obsessed with worry if her husband is in love with her]….

Featured Reviews

Clearly, it’s not for everyone with a current average rating on Goodreads of 3.74 but, it is UNIQUE and QUITE UNFORGETTABLE so it’s earning 5 stars from me!