Hausfrau

For the first half of the book I worried about what I had gotten myself into here. It just seemed disjointed and bleak, jumping from Anna's therapy sessions to her daytime trysts then back to her language classes.

But I started to get the hang of it, a larger image began to resolve itself as I got further into the book. I began to see a spiral pattern where rules of grammar offer up questions of “is the present ever perfect?” - the wordplay suited for the author who comes from a poetic background. Anna's first affair with a pyrologist brings with it questions of a consuming flame. It sounds unbearable but I swear she's far better at it than I am managing here.

The third act hits hard, leaves you a little breathless and ultimately wanting to talk it out with someone, pushing this 3 into a 4 for me.