NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER โข NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE,ย THE HUFFINGTON POST,ย AND SHELF AWARENESSย โข โIn Hausfrau, Anna Karenina goes Fifty Shades with a side of Madame Bovary.โโTime
โA debut novel about Anna, a bored housewife who, like her Tolstoyan namesake, throws herself into a psychosexual journey of self-discovery and tragedy.โโO: The Oprah Magazine
โSexy and insightful, this gorgeously written novel opens a window into one womanโs desperate soul.โโPeople
Anna was a good wife, mostly.ย For readers of The Girl on the Train and The Woman Upstairs comes a striking debut novel of marriage, fidelity, sex, and morality, featuring a fascinating heroine who struggles to live a life with meaning.
Anna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Brunoโa bankerโand their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zรผrich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with the emotionally unavailable Bruno or even with her own thoughts and feelings, Anna tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German language classes, Jungian analysis, and a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises even her.
But Anna canโt easily extract herself from these affairs. When she wants to end them, she finds itโs difficult. Tensions escalate, and her lies start to spin out of control. Having crossed a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back.
Intimate, intense, and written with the precision of a Swiss Army knife, Jill Alexander Essbaumโs debut novel is an unforgettable story of marriage, fidelity, sex, morality, and most especially self. Navigating the lines between lust and love, guilt and shame, excuses and reasons, Anna Benz is an electrifying heroine whose passions and choices readers will debate with recognition and fury. Her story reveals, with honesty and great beauty, how we create ourselves and how we lose ourselves and the sometimes disastrous choices we make to find ourselves.
Praise for Hausfrau
โElegant . . . There is much to admire in Essbaumโs intricately constructed, meticulously composed novel, including its virtuosic intercutting of past and present.โโChicago Tribune
โFor a first novelist, Essbaum is extraordinary because she is a poet. Her language is meticulous and resonant and daring.โโNPRโs Weekend Edition
โWeโre in literary territory as familiar as Annaโs name, but Essbaum makes it fresh with sharp prose and psychological insight.โโSan Francisco Chronicle
โThis marvelously quiet book is psychologically complex and deeply intimate. . . . One of the smartest novels in recent memory.โโThe Dallas Morning News
โEssbaumโs poignant, shocking debut novel rivets.โโUs Weekly
โA powerful, lyrical novel . . . Hausfrau boasts taut pacing and melodrama, but also a fully realized heroine as love-hateable as Emma Bovary.โโThe Huffington Post
โImagine Tom Perrottaโs American nowheresvilles swapped out for a tidy Zรผrich suburb, sprinkled liberally with sharp riffs on Swiss-German grammar and European hypocrisy.โโNew York