Hausfrau

Anna is an American living in Switzerland with her Swiss husband, Bruno, and their children. She's clearly depressed and lonely, still feeling isolated by a language barrier after all these years. She has no girlfriends and her husband is emotionally unavailable. So Anna starts having affairs. It starts with one, but she quickly loses control and can't keep up with her own lies. Things just spiral. (It was only a kiss, how did it end up like this? It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss!)

So ngl, I picked up this book because the cover is beautiful. I didn't really care what it was about; it was a novel, and the cover was gorgeous. Having no expectations, I can't say I was disappointed. But I didn't love it. Anna's depression and total apathy to anyone but her own self is palpable and difficult to read at times. She's not an easily likable protagonist even if she's somewhat understandable at times. Trying to sort through her deception and lies and affairs is frustrating. She's going to therapy but lying to her therapist. She refuses to try to make friends. It's just frustrating.

One thing I was really impressed by was how the timeline could change in almost every paragraph and, without any explanation, we knew exactly what was going on. From a therapy appointment, to what Anna was currently doing, to a few years prior. The timeline skipped around A LOT, but it was never confusing. And that's not easy to do. So props to the author for that. All in all, though, I wouldn't read it again and it was pretty forgettable, hence the three star review.

Would I recommend?
I'd say pass on this one, unless you have a very specific set of things you want in a book and this fits it perfectly.

In Jill Alexander Essbaum's Haufrau, American Anna Benz has been living in Zurich with her Swiss husband, Bruno, for nearly a decade. He's a banker, so he brings in enough income that she doesn't need to work outside the home, and they have three adorable children, two sons and a baby daughter. But despite her long-time residence in Switzerland, Anna speaks only basic German and virtually none of the Swiss German dialect that most people around her use to talk to each other. She's finally decided to take lessons, and it's here she meets Archie, with whom she begins a torrid affair. And it's not the first time she's done something like this.

In fact, Anna seems hardly able to resist a man who wants to sleep with her, as we quickly find out that her daughter was not fathered by her husband. Unlike the joyless, compulsive sex she has with other men, her relationship with her daughter's father was one where she had genuine feelings for her lover. Over the course of the therapy sessions Anna engages in over the course of the book, she reflects back on her upbringing, her marriage, her motherhood, and the profound emptiness she seems to feel at her core. When Anna makes a mistake and the delicate balance she has made of her life seems about to topple, it's only a matter of time before she finds herself at a tragic precipice.

Obviously, an unfaithful wife is rich literary territory, and the name of her heroine is just the beginning of Essbaum's allusions to perhaps the most famous of fictional cheaters: Anna Karenina. Indeed, although the book is relatively short, I found myself frequently wondering what new territory exactly was trying to be explored here. There's so little that's subtle: the fragments of therapy sessions we get are right on the nose, as are the flashes we get of Anna's language classes. The conclusion seems inevitable within the first few pages, so it's not plot tension that drives the narrative forward. And Anna herself, though perhaps meant to be a reflection of the despair that could come from lifelong untreated depression (which seems most likely to be at the root of Anna's disconnect from her own feelings), is just unpleasant to spend time with.

That's not to say there isn't anything worthwhile here. Essbaum's prose is witty and clever, and enjoyable to read. And her choice to make Anna so profoundly flawed, particularly as a wife and mother, the roles which we put a tremendous amount of pressure on women to perform highly in, makes her an unusual heroine. Male characters are allowed to shirk their responsibilities to their partners and children and still be redeemable. It was challenging to think about how much of the antipathy I felt for Anna was wrapped up in the expectations I brought to the table about the kind of female character I root for or get invested in. But at the end of the day, even recognizing that bias, Anna's joylessness was just exhausting. This book got a lot of buzz when it came out, but fell very flat for me. I enjoyed it so little that I can't recommend it.

The descriptions of life in Switzerland were amazingly accurate (having lived there for a year) and brought back for me...many good memories. The book was well written but was dark and depressing. Although I enjoyed listening to it and finished it in less than 24 hours, I have mixed feelings about recommending it as I found it, in retrospect to be very depressing.