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Hausfrau

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Hausfrau

By: Jill Alexander Essbaum
Narrated by: Mozhan Marno
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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 . . .

 Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Women's Fiction Marriage
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Critic reviews

With an elegance, precision and surehandedness that recalls Marguerite Duras's The Lover and Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac, Jill Alexander Essbaum gives us this exquisite tale of an expatriate American wife living in Switzerland and her sexual and psychic unraveling. Hausfrau stuns with its confidence and severe beauty, its cascading insights into the uses of erotic life and the nature of secrets, the urgency of compulsion and the difficulty of freedom. A rare and remarkable debut.
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I was drawn to the book firstly because of the narrator, who I know as an actress, then when I read the synopsis, to the landscape of the story.

Positives - it gave me a trip down memory lane, as the main character frequented places I used to and in the same time frame that I did. The author also captured the isolation of an ex-pat in Zurich, and many of the experiences of the protagonist were similar to my own - standoffish Swiss relatives and acquaintances of a Swiss partner, the loss of self-confidence in the face of mistakes that in your own country wouldn’t even appear on any radar. The difficulties of integrating into a culture that is similar, yet different to one’s own (it’s probably easier in a way to acclimatise to a more alien culture, because your expectations of yourself and others are much lower). Having had a supportive partner, that’s where the similarities end.

The tipping point in the book was well written from an emotional view, as were the last few chapters.

The actual structure and style of the storytelling were also interesting and entertaining to a point.

Negatives - the protagonist was not likeable - despite us having similar experiences within Switzerland, there was a disconnect in her responses. She despised herself from the start of the book, but with little context for her self-hate. I suspect she had a chronic adjustment disorder and the people around her, including the psychiatrist, were remiss in the way they dealt with her. Actually, most of the characters were unlikeable - the husband, the mother-in-law (who was reminiscent of my own), her friends and colleagues all seen through her jaded gaze. Are there really so many people who lack humanity? It felt it was written as though the author believed that she should have all the blame, but in reality, it’s not so black and white.

There was too much detail for the average reader to enjoy. The various tram stop, street and station names were great for me, but had it been a city with which I had little to no experience, then it would have proved an annoyance. The sexploits, for me, contained far too much detail, in a similar way to the geography, and repetition thereof. Other people’s sexual experiences are as interesting to me as the street names of a city I have no relationship with.
The detail overshadowed the plot, seemed more important than the story somehow.

It ended in an understated and quiet way, quite contrary to the melodrama of the protagonist’s ways of seeing her world.

50 Shades meets Rough Guide to Canton Zurich

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I enjoyed the book and the narrator was generally good but her accents are shocking! Almost worth a listen for her Scottish and Welsh accents alone - terrible.

Awful accents!

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I so didn't like her from the beginning of the book and throughout. By the end, I was happy for her choice

Tragic

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Interesting story which was well written and kept my attention better than a lot of audio books...however as it neared the end I felt it got a bit depressing for me!

Compelling but a bit depressing!

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A powerful story, that moves inexorably to its inevitable, tragic conclusion, one entirely of Anna's own making, but still, I felt only compassion for her throughout. The reading is superb, emotionally pitch perfect. As a British listener I could have done without the American English, but that is a minor quibble.

Utterly compelling narrative, compellingly read

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