Summary
Summary
In this suspenseful and darkly funny debut novel, a sophisticated French woman spends her life obsessing over her perfect husband--but can their marriage survive her passionate love?
A Belletrist Book Club Pick * An Amazon UK Best Book of the Year * Winner of France's First Novel Prize * Named a Best Book of the Summer by Vogue * theSkimm * Oprah Daily * The Millions
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, whose wealthy background allows her to transcend her own social class. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she's never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated.
Determined to keep their relationship perfect, she meticulously prepares for every encounter they have, always taking care to make her actions seem effortless. She watches him attentively, testing him to make sure that he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met.
Until one day she realizes she may have gone too far . . .
"Fans of Caroline Kepnes' You or Gillian Flynn will find My Husband to be a new, satisfying, and unnerving take on the relationship-suspense genre." --Booklist (starred review)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ventura's irresistible debut follows a week in the life of a Paris woman obsessed with her husband of 15 years. When the unnamed narrator's husband tells her one Sunday morning that they need to talk, she assumes the worst: their marriage is over. She recounts the days leading up to this moment, detailing her routine as a high school English teacher, literary translator, and mother of two children. Underneath her veneer of normalcy, however, she constantly frets over her relationship with her husband. She's deeply in love but never comfortable--she pretends to be nonchalant around him, but won't let him see her without makeup and keeps a diamond ring from an ex hidden in a box. Her anxiety spirals after a night with friends, during which her husband compares her to an inferior fruit: "How could he have reduced his own wife to the rank of a vulgar clementine? (And why not a banana?)" When he doesn't wish her goodnight, she silently refuses to cuddle with him. As the mystery intensifies regarding what the husband has to say to her and why she thinks it's all over, the narrator's behavior becomes increasingly reckless. Ramadan's exacting translation grips the attention, 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--right up to to the explosive ending. It's a bold and memorable first outing. Agent: Marleen Seegers, 2 Seas Agency. (July)
Guardian Review
A week may be a long time in politics but it can feel longer still in a tempestuous marriage. Superficially, the couple at the centre of Maud Ventura's compulsively disquieting debut embody domestic bliss: they have good looks and professional success, two children and an elegant home. Yet over the course of just seven days, the novel's besotted narrator convinces herself that her spouse of 13 years is variously having an affair, utterly devoted to her and poised to demand a divorce. The prologue hints at a looming crisis, but what maintains the suspense is the heroine's combination of subjugation and vengeful empowerment (the secret notebook in which she logs her husband's misdemeanours feels like payback for every fairytale women have been fed about romantic love). There's simply no way of telling how far she'll go, and her increasingly volatile unreliability as a narrator makes the story all the more riveting. "I love my husband as much as the first day I met him," she says. "I think of my husband all the time; I wish I could text him all day. I imagine telling him I love him every morning, and I dream of making love to him every night." It's a kind of boast - there's vanity in it, and no wonder, given the efforts she makes to maintain this long extension of their honeymoon period. A regime of body-sculpting yoga and going glasses-free because her husband prefers it are just the beginning: every aspect of her life is sublimated to her feelings for him. The book was published in France in 2021, selling nearly 100,000 copies and winning the Prix du Premier Roman Servile as that sounds, she's also manipulative and, when she needs to be, ruthless. Because it turns out that her infatuation is matched only by her fury at her husband's apparent failure to return her obsessive passion. Every interaction is analysed with neurotic intensity, and punishments for falling asleep without saying good night or seeming to slight her at a dinner party can range from hiding his keys to conducting an illicit rendezvous with another man. My Husband became a literary sensation when it was published in France in 2021, selling nearly 100,000 copies and winning the Prix du Premier Roman. In translation - and the translation is excellent - it has already been likened to everything from the novels of Patricia Highsmith to Gone Girl to Fatal Attraction. For anglophone readers, there's an added satisfaction here: the narrator's erotically charged mind games and her ability to switch between coldness and unbridled sensuality is all so very, well, French. The twist at the end is genuinely surprising, but even as it casts fresh light on the preceding pages, it does in some ways make the book less interesting. What's undeniable, though, is the noirish spin it adds to the heroine's belief in that women's mag staple "the couples that last are the ones that keep the mystery alive". Readers won't be surprised to learn that while Ventura began writing My Husband deeply in love with her boyfriend, she finished it after he dumped her.
Kirkus Review
Ventura's first novel explores love's darker alleyways through the eyes of a 40-year-old Frenchwoman who's obsessed with her husband. One Sunday, after becoming aware that her 15-year marriage may be about to implode, the unnamed narrator, a part-time teacher and English-French translator, relives the previous week. She defines each day by color and general mood; so Monday is blue, a day of beginnings, while quarrelsome Tuesday is black, and good luck Friday, green. But all revolve around the narrator's excessive passion for her husband (referred to only as "my husband" as a declaration of possession). A modern Emma Bovary aiming her passionate energy toward her husband instead of a lover, she knows "I have to control myself" to avoid appearing "unseemly." Insecure in her husband's moneyed, bourgeois world, she relies on organization and rules. She teaches herself etiquette from a book. She fills notebooks with lists. Each day she notates both reasons she adores him--good looks, charisma, breeding, earning power--and a litany of his abuses: kissing her cheek instead of lips, holding her hand too briefly, choosing a clementine to describe her in a game with friends. She's created rules her husband breaks without knowing they exist and doles out what she considers corresponding punishments that range from ignoring his calls to having meaningless sexual assignations. The reader sees the narrator's husband only through her neurotic, nit-picking lens. Is he controlling and oblivious or devoted both to her and their two children (whom she finds distractions from the marriage)? Self-consciously erudite with her references to Phaedra and Duras, the narrator is also witty; a riff on how to translate "sweep me off my feet" into French is particularly charming. Beyond eccentric, she is easy to laugh at but also a discomforting object of condescending pity. And yes, there's a somewhat contrived twist at the end that reading groups will love to discuss. Writing about control as much as love, Ventura describes a marriage from hell that works, however oddly. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Debut novelist Ventura depicts a seemingly normal, upper-class French couple: sophisticated, intelligent wife and charming, gentle husband. The book is told from the perspective of the unnamed wife, and the reader learns through her (occasionally) unreliable narration that something darker and more haunting lurks just beneath the surface of the idyllic veneer. While they have been married for 15 years, can she really be sure that her husband loves her? Can she finally devise the perfect combination of espionage and record keeping, romance techniques, and plans for his punishment to make certain that her husband's love for her is real? My Husband is an original take on the suspense genre, depicting and using the daily realities of marriage to build tension and grow the reader's sense of thrill. Ventura very cleverly explores themes of paranoia, class, and, above all, obsessive love through the couple's everyday neuroses, building their significance (and their darkness) to keep readers in suspense. The translation by Ramadan adeptly conveys both the setting and the growing tension. Fans of Caroline Kepnes' You (2014) or Gillian Flynn will find My Husband to be a new, satisfying, and unnerving take on the relationship-suspense genre