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Hausfrau

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Hausfrau

By: Jill Alexander Essbaum
Narrated by: Mozhan Marno
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About this listen

An extraordinary debut literary pause-resister with echoes of Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.

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....

©2015 Jill Alexander Essbaum (P)2015 Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Women's Fiction

Critic Reviews

“A tense novel about morality, fidelity and identity.” (Elle Magazine)
“This slow-burning literary novel of marital disintegration will leave you in bits. It’s a bleak, but beautiful read, with echoes of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.” (Glamour Magazine)
“It’s the book that will have everyone talking… The author spent unhappy years in Switzerland and the sense of alienation in the book rings true. By the end you might like Anna a little more – and you’ll certainly have a lot to think about.” (Cosmo Magazine)
“I read this in one sitting, transfixed by this insightful and shocking portrait of a woman on the edge.” (Woman & Home)
"To the steaminess of EL James’s erotic classic, it adds the marital dysfunction of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and the commuter neuroses of Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train. There won’t be a sun lounger or beach bag without it this summer.’ (Laura Freeman, Sunday Telegraph)
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Is this a case of Anna finds trouble or trouble finds her???
For a seemingly forgettable housewife blending into the background of Zurich expat housewife life, Anna sure seems to attract a lot of male attention. And do so much with it. Which makes her life filled with normally rather bland domestic commitments on the surface suddenly become rather intruiging and fascinating. An excellent study of someone living a double life and very quietly screaming out for help.

A Lost Soul in Zurich

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Very good book, read perfectly! Wasn't sure what to expect however I really enjoyed it! Ending was pretty good too

Didn't want to turn it off

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I don't know what to think of this book. I persevered to the end but the main character was just so depressing, so immoral, so mixed up that I wanted to shake her. There was nothing to lighten the depressive nature of this novel ... no side storylines that take you away from the miserable life this woman leads. Billed as a mixture of Anna K and Madame Bovary .... it even lacked the love/infatuation those two heroines had for the men that ultimately led to their destruction. The love interest of this Anna was long gone. On the plus side, the use of the German language classes to highlight some of her feelings was clever but the constant whining about everything in her life and then dealing with it the way she does was just pathetic.

Not Anna Karenina

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wasn't enthralled by the book but finished it because I was curious about the ending. somehow the ending seemed like too simple a solution to the problems.

so-so

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