My Husband
‘A gripping read’ Sunday Times
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE 2024 DAGGER FOR CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION
PRIZE WINNER OF FRANCE'S FIRST NOVEL AWARD
'Riveting' OBSERVER
'Totally addictive' ALICE SLATER
'I couldn't put it down' JOHN BOYNE
From the outside, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she's never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated.
Determined to keep their relationship perfect, she meticulously prepares for every encounter they have, always taking care to make her actions seem effortless. She watches him attentively, charting every mistake and punishing him accordingly to help him improve. And she tests him - setting traps to make sure that he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met.
Until one day she realizes she may have gone too far . . .
With the surprise of Gone Girl, the bleakness of The Talented Mr Ripley and the sinister charm of the Netflix thriller You, My Husband is a bold and exhilarating story of passion and the dark secrets that lie beneath a seemingly healthy marriage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ventura's irresistible debut follows a week in the life of a Paris woman obsessed with her husband of 15 years. When the unnamed narrator's husband tells her one Sunday morning that they need to talk, she assumes the worst: their marriage is over. She recounts the days leading up to this moment, detailing her routine as a high school English teacher, literary translator, and mother of two children. Underneath her veneer of normalcy, however, she constantly frets over her relationship with her husband. She's deeply in love but never comfortable—she pretends to be nonchalant around him, but won't let him see her without makeup and keeps a diamond ring from an ex hidden in a box. Her anxiety spirals after a night with friends, during which her husband compares her to an inferior fruit: "How could he have reduced his own wife to the rank of a vulgar clementine? (And why not a banana?)" When he doesn't wish her goodnight, she silently refuses to cuddle with him. As the mystery intensifies regarding what the husband has to say to her and why she thinks it's all over, the narrator's behavior becomes increasingly reckless. Ramadan's exacting translation grips the attention, and what makes this so thrilling is not just the narrator's surprising ruthlessness but how Ventura causes the reader to repeatedly change their mind about who's to blame for the messed up marriage—right up to to the explosive ending. It's a bold and memorable first outing.
