My Husband
by Maud Ventura
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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 show more 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)
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Playing tennis, staying at school to grade homework, going to dinner with friends in town, pretending to be asleep when he gets home late at night. During these absences, I hope he misses me. However, I know that I lost the benefit of novelty long ago. He never looks at me anymore like I'm a stranger entering a bar or someone else's wife. I don't know if I'll ever understand why I've never stopped observing my husband from afar, with the necessary and sufficient distance to be able to admire him."
This is...a really brilliant portrait of psychosis. I love an unnamed narrator, and it works so well when a book is centered around a woman who constructs her entire existence around her appearance to others. Our protagonist has gaslit herself show more into oblivion, and I love her for it. I feel so much less unstable because of this fictional insane woman.
#isupportwomenswrongs show less
This is...a really brilliant portrait of psychosis. I love an unnamed narrator, and it works so well when a book is centered around a woman who constructs her entire existence around her appearance to others. Our protagonist has gaslit herself show more into oblivion, and I love her for it. I feel so much less unstable because of this fictional insane woman.
#isupportwomenswrongs show less
My Husband by Maud Ventura
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Wow, this book was something! I’m very excited about it, you can tell because I included quotes!
The story follows the events of a single week in the domestic life of a French family. We are in the point of view of the wife (no name), a beautiful and wealthy woman in her forties with two children and a husband she has an all-consuming obsession with. This is capital O Obsessed, her every thought and action revolves around this man to a frankly terrifying degree!
At the beginning, I had no idea where it was going to end. It does start off slow and a little bit repetitive, in the way that real life is, but if you stick with it, I think this is a masterclass in slowly increasing tension as show more we learn, bit by bit, just how unhinged this lady really is!
You won’t like the wife, so if you need to like a protagonist, walk away! I alternated between wondering WTF is wrong with her, being worried for her, then being worried for her children and her husband, to wishing she could get away and find a healthier way to live!
To be in love
At the core of her psyche is this idea that love should be all-consuming, passionate and obsessive. I’m sure we are all familiar with this from books, TV shows and movies we’ve grown up with. To be in love is to have butterflies in your stomach, to feel the spark and fireworks! You know what gives you butterflies? Stress and anxiety! And this idea of love is how so many women end up in relationships with men that treat them like shit.
At one point, the wife describes a previous relationship, one she left because she thought it lacked passion.
What I have found is that love is, in truth, the absence of any anxiety about my relationship! It is feeling safe and happy with my husband!
The wife has taken this idea of what being in love means and made it her entire being. Consequently, she has consumed every piece of terrible advice given to women by magazines and advice columns in the last fifty years.
She has been with this man for fifteen years and has never gone to the bathroom within his hearing!
Unreliable narrator
As an unreliable narrator, she’s really interesting. She scrutinises every little tiny word, action and gesture to such a degree that perspective is impossible! Is her husband cruel? Is he just mediocre? Is he actually a good husband, and is she her own problem? Does she even actually love him? Is any of this even about him?
Many other lovely little details to heighten the sense of someone grasping for control. The day of the week structure works well; they are familiar and reliable, but while time marches forward, they are also circular and repetitive. Then comes the idea that each day of the week has a colour, and the colour has meaning. Naturally, the meaning of some days is more positive than others, creating something to look forward to but also dread. This paints a background layer, which I found simultaneously comforting and disturbing, cycling way behind to all the other compulsive thoughts that occupy the wife’s inner life.
Another wonderful layer to this book is that the wife works as an English teacher with a side job of translating written works into English. The work of translating into a different language while still trying to retain the original meaning is honestly something I’d never really considered before, even though I have read quite a few translated works (side note: I should create a tag for that!) – including this one, which was originally written in French (ahh, another delicious layer!)! I enjoyed those little insights in her work, and how it may feed into her habit of over analysing the meaning of every little thing (the clementine!). It is also another way in which she sacrifices her own voice. She writes but she is always a vessel for others.
This is also a book with a fucking great ending! I was not prepared for it, I keep thinking about it. I’m not doing to say more than that.
I’ll leave you with one thing on which the wife and I agree!
I would definitely read more from this author, apparently this is her debut!
# REVIEW SUMMARY
## I LIKED
- Really interesting Unreliable Narrator with a completely unhinged perspective.
- Delicious themes: love, obsession, meaning
- Darkly funny, it did make me laugh a couple of times!
- Fantastic slowly building tension and creepiness!
## I DIDN’T LIKE
- It is a little bit slow at the beginning, but I think the build up pays off in the end!
View all my reviews show less
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Wow, this book was something! I’m very excited about it, you can tell because I included quotes!
The story follows the events of a single week in the domestic life of a French family. We are in the point of view of the wife (no name), a beautiful and wealthy woman in her forties with two children and a husband she has an all-consuming obsession with. This is capital O Obsessed, her every thought and action revolves around this man to a frankly terrifying degree!
At the beginning, I had no idea where it was going to end. It does start off slow and a little bit repetitive, in the way that real life is, but if you stick with it, I think this is a masterclass in slowly increasing tension as show more we learn, bit by bit, just how unhinged this lady really is!
You won’t like the wife, so if you need to like a protagonist, walk away! I alternated between wondering WTF is wrong with her, being worried for her, then being worried for her children and her husband, to wishing she could get away and find a healthier way to live!
To be in love
At the core of her psyche is this idea that love should be all-consuming, passionate and obsessive. I’m sure we are all familiar with this from books, TV shows and movies we’ve grown up with. To be in love is to have butterflies in your stomach, to feel the spark and fireworks! You know what gives you butterflies? Stress and anxiety! And this idea of love is how so many women end up in relationships with men that treat them like shit.
When it comes to love, I’ve learned nothing. I’ve been reliving the same scenario ever since I was a teenager: I love too intensely and I’m consumed by my own love (analysis, jealousy, doubt)—so much so that when I’m in love, I always end up slightly extinguished and saddened. When I love, I become harsh, serious, intolerant. A heavy shadow settles over my relationships. I love and want to be loved with so much gravitas that it quickly becomes exhausting (for me, for the other person). It’s always an unhappy kind of love.
At one point, the wife describes a previous relationship, one she left because she thought it lacked passion.
There was only one exception: Adrien. For the first time in my life, I was with a man who loved me more than I loved him. Two years with Adrien, going to sleep before him every night; two years with no sadness but also with no passion.
What I have found is that love is, in truth, the absence of any anxiety about my relationship! It is feeling safe and happy with my husband!
The wife has taken this idea of what being in love means and made it her entire being. Consequently, she has consumed every piece of terrible advice given to women by magazines and advice columns in the last fifty years.
I’ve had to maintain my blond with brightening products that I hide so my husband doesn’t suspect anything. I also don’t tell him when I go to the hairdresser for highlights or a root touch-up. I don’t know if my husband is aware of my natural color.
She has been with this man for fifteen years and has never gone to the bathroom within his hearing!
Unreliable narrator
As an unreliable narrator, she’s really interesting. She scrutinises every little tiny word, action and gesture to such a degree that perspective is impossible! Is her husband cruel? Is he just mediocre? Is he actually a good husband, and is she her own problem? Does she even actually love him? Is any of this even about him?
Many other lovely little details to heighten the sense of someone grasping for control. The day of the week structure works well; they are familiar and reliable, but while time marches forward, they are also circular and repetitive. Then comes the idea that each day of the week has a colour, and the colour has meaning. Naturally, the meaning of some days is more positive than others, creating something to look forward to but also dread. This paints a background layer, which I found simultaneously comforting and disturbing, cycling way behind to all the other compulsive thoughts that occupy the wife’s inner life.
The idea behind “let you go” is pleasant; there’s even something reassuring about it. It’s a fiction that I, too, would like to believe in. Absorbed in my translation, I wonder if that expression, so difficult to translate into French, testifies to the fact that English-speakers love differently than us.
Another wonderful layer to this book is that the wife works as an English teacher with a side job of translating written works into English. The work of translating into a different language while still trying to retain the original meaning is honestly something I’d never really considered before, even though I have read quite a few translated works (side note: I should create a tag for that!) – including this one, which was originally written in French (ahh, another delicious layer!)! I enjoyed those little insights in her work, and how it may feed into her habit of over analysing the meaning of every little thing (the clementine!). It is also another way in which she sacrifices her own voice. She writes but she is always a vessel for others.
This is also a book with a fucking great ending! I was not prepared for it, I keep thinking about it. I’m not doing to say more than that.
I’ll leave you with one thing on which the wife and I agree!
I’ve always hated children who talk too loudly. The decibel level that is socially acceptable for children has always seemed excessive to me.
I would definitely read more from this author, apparently this is her debut!
# REVIEW SUMMARY
## I LIKED
- Really interesting Unreliable Narrator with a completely unhinged perspective.
- Delicious themes: love, obsession, meaning
- Darkly funny, it did make me laugh a couple of times!
- Fantastic slowly building tension and creepiness!
## I DIDN’T LIKE
- It is a little bit slow at the beginning, but I think the build up pays off in the end!
View all my reviews show less
A revealing, fascinating and disturbing portrait of contemporary marriage in France, narrated over the course of a week by the wife. She is an English teacher and a translator of novels and as such, is highly analytical of words and behaviour. She carries this analysis into her 15 years of marriage as she worries over whether her husband still loves her and over the week her suspicions grow and her fears drive her to desperation. At the same time, her mental state appears to deteriorate and her actions become more erratic. The question is: is this love as she insists? Or obsession? Or control? All appear to be possible as the week passes and another Sunday comes around. But will it herald a fresh start for their marriage? You are show more compelled to read on for the answer. show less
I appreciated this book for its humor. I listened to it on audio and it was very short. But really hilarious how crazy this woman was. Very dark humor kind of book about a woman who is absolutely obsessed with her husband, in the most psychotic way possible. She loves her husband way more than her children. The book is mostly from her perspective and the absolute crazy things she does. She logs every little thing her husband does. It's just incredible. And then the final chapter, is the husband's perspective, and she has not given him enough credit. He's really controlling everything and he knows everything that she logs and does. Just amazing. They're both completely crazy and meant for each other. I really kind of dug the dark humor show more in this. It definitely got repetitive and you wanted to slap the main character, but I think that was also the point of the book. show less
i only read literary fiction about women being unwell. and clearly not for everyone as this book currently has an average rating of 3.73 on goodreads, but it is unique and unforgettable! this was a very fast, musing, creepy, pathetic, abrasive, clever book. you will hear the words “my husband” so many times throughout this book that you will have already lost track of the number of times you have heard it before monday is even over. that is by design, because she is in fact OBSESSED with her husband. headings of chapters are a day of the week beginning with monday. the wife has specific rules about what happens on each one of these days or what each day symbolizes and they all have a color. wednesday is orange like a clementine. show more “My yellow Thursday start joyfully". and saturday is red "for him". she is THE queen of righteous indignation and of observations. over analyzing everything that he says and does she will punish him in both passive aggressive ways when appropriate. i found myself wondering if she was like this when the two first married or if had perhaps been a slow descent into madness over the fifteen years they've been together. like a car wreck that you can't help but to look at, i could not stop listening to this crazy book narrated so well by kiiri sandy. i was captivated by this story and our very unlikable narrator. it all seems like french from the outside -playing mind games with somebody who is playing mind games on you instead of just talking things out show less
This is a strange book about a 40-year old woman OBSESSED with her husband of 13 years and the lengths she goes through to keep him hers. It’s described as suspenseful and darkly funny, but I found neither to be really true. However, I didn’t dislike the book; it was just different than what I was expecting.
The protagonist is a maddening character and readers are trapped in her head with her troubling thoughts. I’m not sure the epilogue was a satisfying enough payoff after enduring this woman, but maybe you could take the whole thing as a cautionary tale.
I think that Maud Ventura is a talented writer, and Emma Ramadan did a beautiful job translating her words into English from the original French. Oddly enough, the protagonist in show more this book is also a French to English translator.
I would recommend this to fans of quiet psychological suspense novels, perhaps like Mrs. March. Borrowed from the library. show less
The protagonist is a maddening character and readers are trapped in her head with her troubling thoughts. I’m not sure the epilogue was a satisfying enough payoff after enduring this woman, but maybe you could take the whole thing as a cautionary tale.
I think that Maud Ventura is a talented writer, and Emma Ramadan did a beautiful job translating her words into English from the original French. Oddly enough, the protagonist in show more this book is also a French to English translator.
I would recommend this to fans of quiet psychological suspense novels, perhaps like Mrs. March. Borrowed from the library. show less
I cannot say I enjoyed reading this book. However, the premise (a woman so obsessed with her husband) did get under my skin and had me thinking about my husband, our relationship, honesty, dishonesty, and compulsion. My daughter insisted I read it saying she wasn’t sure if she liked it but that it was compelling and funny. I think she was referring to the black humor in sprung in the epilogue. The main character’s translation work was interesting as was some of her descriptions of her presentations in her teaching job. But all in all she was creepy and self involved as I believe the author intended. Fortunately, it was a short read as I found myself eager to be finished.
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Author Information
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Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- My Husband
- Original title
- Mon Mari
- First words*
- Je suis amoureuse de mon mari. Mais je devrais plutôt dire : je suis toujours amoureuse de mon mari.
- Original language
- French
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Suspense & Thriller, Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 843.92 — Literature & rhetoric French & related literatures French fiction 1900- 2000-
- LCC
- PQ2722 .E64 .M6613 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures French literature Modern literature 2001-
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 460
- Popularity
- 65,925
- Reviews
- 23
- Rating
- (3.64)
- Languages
- 7 — Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 22
- ASINs
- 9
