2023-05-09
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.
[A] wry, psychologically complex debut . . . This riveting emotional thriller requires serious willpower to not devour in a single sitting.” — Oprah Daily
“Irresistible. . . . Thrilling. . . . Ramadan's exacting translation holds the reader in her grip. . . . A bold and memorable first outing.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“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.” — Booklist (starred review)
“If you obsessively reread (or, let’s be real, rewatched) Gone Girl, then this darkly comic French novel about a woman so deeply besotted with her picture-perfect husband that she goes to some truly crazy lengths to keep him within her clutches is almost sure to resonate with you.” — Vogue
“What a wonderfully tense, obsessive, enveloping novel—almost like a feminist, introspective spin on Fatal Attraction! Ventura’s deftly spun debut is a sharply observed dissection of marriage that will haunt you for days.” — Virginia Feito, author of Mrs. March
“Don't miss. Had me weeping with laughter . . . [and] will have you thinking hard about the meaning of love.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“An unsettling novel about the ultimate unknowability of your spouse and a sure-footed addition to a canon that might include Jane Eyre and Gone Girl . . . Gripping reading.” — Sunday Times (London)
“One of the most daring, provocative, unnervingly intimate thrillers I’ve read in years. It’s a glass of Sancerre, crisp and cold and dry – and the more you swallow, the more you’ll lose your balance. Few writers besides Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith can evoke domestic unease with such sangfroid; fewer still can make it such delirious fun. My Husband is the novel for any woman with a husband. Or perhaps for any man with a wife. Merveilleux, Mademoiselle Ventura!” — A. J. Finn, #1 NYT bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
“While I tend to be more obsessed with my husband’s exes than my husband himself, this book had me reeling, laughing and re-examining my life choices. I loved every minute.” — Jenny Mollen Biggs, New York Times bestselling author of City of Likes
“A delicious addition to the relationship-suspense genre.” — The Millions
"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
"As funny as it is fierce . . . An outstanding novel!" — Paris La Douce
“Irresistible and delightful.” — Amelie Nothomb, author of Fear and Trembling
“Reading groups will love to discuss.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Ventura gradually ratchets up the tension, as if she’s stretching a rubber band. What will make it snap?” — New York Times Book Review
