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    Hausfrau: A Novel
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    Hausfrau: A Novel
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    Hausfrau: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Hausfrau: A Novel

    Written by Jill Alexander Essbaum

    Narrated by Mozhan Marno

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Anna was a good wife, mostly. For listeners 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, Bruno-a banker-and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. 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 can't easily extract herself from these affairs. When she wants to end them, she finds it's 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 Essbaum's 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.

    Editor's Note

    Emotionally riveting…

    Essbaum’s modern incarnation of “Anna Karenina” and “Madame Bovary” is riveting. She captures the prison of depression with an accuracy and lyricism that’s impossible to deny.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 17, 2015
    ISBN9780553551594
    Unavailable
    Hausfrau: A Novel
    Author

    Jill Alexander Essbaum

    Jill Alexander Essbaum is the author of several collections of poetry. Her work has twice appeared in The Best American Poetry, as well as its sister anthology, The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present. A winner of the Bakeless Poetry Prize and recipient of two NEA literature fellowships, Essbaum is a member of the core faculty of the Low Residency MFA at the University of California, Riverside, where she teaches poetry. She lives and writes in Austin, Tesco. This is her first novel.

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    Reviews for Hausfrau

    3.5/5

    340 ratings98 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Initially, I was fascinated by Anna. Perhaps because she was more selfish than I would ever be and it was interesting to experience something so different vicariously. Perhaps just in the way an inevitable accident attracts your attention. However, my interest faded quickly as Anna's apathy about her life began to influence me. If she didn't care about what she was doing, why should I care? Between the adultery and the name, there were obvious parallels to be drawn with Anna Karenina, which I loved. But this Anna's apathy was the biggest difference. I always felt Anna K. had an intense passion for life, which made her fascinating and seductive. I loved her as a character. This Anna, not so much. I didn't dislike her; she just wasn't interesting.

      I did love the story structure. I have a hard time saying no to a story that jumps between different storylines, whether different characters or different times and places. In this book, the juxtaposition of Anna's past, present, and meetings with her psychiatrist were very well done. I thought the author made some profound points about loneliness, love, life in general using the sessions with the psychiatrist as a place to comment on the other events of the book. I even thought the author did a good job making me feel what Anna felt. I empathized with her boredom and her loneliness. This could be part of why I was sucked in by her apathy. Perhaps even this is a mark of the author's talent. For me, though, it didn't make for a very enjoyable read.This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey.
    • 3/5
      Die Amerikanerin Anna lebt mit ihrem Mann und drei Kindern in der Schweiz. Sie kann kein Deutsch, hat keine Hobbies und keine Freunde. Eine „Hausfrau“ ist sie allerdings auch nicht, tatsächlich hält sie sich kaum im Haus auf. Die Kinder sind bei der Schwiegermutter. Anna verbringt ihre Tage mit ihren Liebhabern, in der Psychotherapie, im Deutschkurs oder weinend auf einer Bank.Als ich mit diesem Buch angefangen habe, war ich nach einiger Zeit überrascht, dass es ja 2007 spielt und nicht 1950. Der Frauentyp erscheint so seltsam altmodisch. Leider kann ich nicht viel mit Anna anfangen. Tatsächlich finde ich sie furchtbar unsympathisch, ihre Passivität sehr unangenehm. Ich finde sie auch nicht überzeugend. Vieles an dem Buch, die Dialoge mit der Therapeutin Dr. Messerli, die metaphorischen Betrachtungen über die deutsche Sprache oder über Feuer sind künstlich und etwas albern. Insofern war mir Anna sowieso fremd, aber ich konnte sie über das Buch auch nicht kennenlernen oder nachempfinden, da ich es zu unglaubwürdig fand. Mir ist der künstlerische Gehalt des Buches, seine Sprache, seine Geschichte, seine Symbolik durchaus deutlich geworden. Aber gefallen hat es mir nicht. Vielleicht gibt es solche Frauen, aber ich kenne sie nicht wirklich. Und eigentlich will ich sie auch nicht kennenlernen.
    • 2/5
      Anna, the eponymous Hausfrau, is an American housewife married to a Swiss banker, raising her three children in Switzerland. I don't think I've ever met a protagonist with less agency. Anna has no goals, no ambition, and therefore no apparent motivations, aside from the occasional desire for serial intercourse. She is not a character who does things; she is a character to whom things are done. For this reason, Anna's story is a frustrating and depressing one. She falls into affairs simply, it seems, because men ask her to, with predictable outcomes. I think the author may have been trying to create a modern-day Anna Karenina (the name is not the only wink-nudge parallel), but she has mistaken the pathetic for the truly tragic. The only real tragedy here is that the time I spent reading about Anna's half-hearted efforts at self-actualization cannot be reclaimed and directed toward another, more deserving (or at least more interesting) character.


      I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
    • 5/5
      K wow. I do not understand the mediocre reviews for Hausfrau. It is beautifully written, the author is a poet and it shows. Its tragic from start to end. Anna’s is depressed and isolated after spending 10 years in Switzerland, she hasn’t connected with anyone and is not part of the community. She has a history of this, but is has become too much. Anna has had affairs and continues to have them, she’s trying to fill a void/pain with sex, but its a short term solution. Her husband Bruno is reserved, she has 3 kids, one that isn’t her husband’s, no close friends in Switzerland or in the US, she’s just going with the flow and its making her miserable. The book is a mixture of past events with her first affair partner (father of her baby girl), her psychiatric meetings, and events unfolding in the present. The last third of the book is painful, the last chapter is beyond words.

      Maybe I like Hausfrau because the emotions Anna describes are familiar. I think everyone can find something familiar about being passive to an extent. The book reminded me a lot of The Bell Jar and Anna Karenina, but in a style of it’s own. Highly recommend!
    • 2/5
      Well-written but the story was not to my taste. The setting was interesting, and I enjoyed learning more about the culture of Switzerland through the novel. I had no sympathy for the main character, Anna. The ending was predictably bleak and frustrating. I've actually never read Anna Karenina, so maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I had?
    • 2/5
      I know this has received rave reviews, but I was very disappointed in the novel. I found it tedious, boring and very predictable - characters were one dimensional and it was hard to care about any of them - except the kids who were stuck with the main character for a mother.
    • 5/5
      I really loved this book. It's not my 'type' of book, normally, but it was so good. Beautifully written and jarring at times. It's not your typical romance novel and it's so much more than a romance...it's psychological. The main character is a bit tricky; I didn't like her at first until she grew on me a bit. I think the main downside of the book will be that women won't connect with the main character. She's not an easily likable character, but she's a very 'real' character. It's a catch-22.
    • 4/5
      The novel is about a lonely American housewife living with her Swiss husband in Zurich. She begins having multiple affiairs and still is unfulfilled. Her life begin spiraling downward out of control. The ending is not cut and dry , it has the reader deciding what her fate will be. Don't like that.
    • 1/5
      This book is a series of cliches and obvious metaphors. It's not clever, it's not introspective, it's not developed. There is nothing new about the characters or the situations Anna finds herself in. Every single conversation with her therapist (which was only, like, every other paragraph) made me want to rip my eyeballs out. This is the same morally ambiguous, bored housewife story we've had for decades, and I would disagree with those who are saying it offers any sort of nuance. I tried and tried to approach it as more than a bored housewife story and as a book that dealt with depression and mental instability, but it just rang hollow to me.By the time we got to the heart of it - to the catalyst that pushes Anna past her breaking point and her subsequent unraveling - I was so detached from the characters and the story that it couldn't reel me back in. I recognized that the second half of the book was more interesting than the first, and I did feel for Anna, but...I don't know, by that point it just couldn't make up for the damage that had been done in the first half. (Which, I realize as I type this, is even more interesting now that I think about how that parallels the plot) Maybe I was just in a particularly cynical and misanthropic mood when I read it. I'll give it some time and try it again. I hate giving books 1 star reviews. But hey, 10/10 on cover art at least.
    • 2/5
      I received this book from Early Reviewers. I was intrigued by the title and the description of the story. HOWEVER, that's were the interest ends. I tried hard to get into this book, but I could never connect with the main character especially, but didn't feel a lot for any of the other characters either. A woman with issues, who, it seemed to me, was intent on ruining the lovely life she had. Such a sad downward spiral... but not in the least interesting. In the end, I cared so little, that I couldn't even bring myself to finish.... So many great books, How did this one get published? Sorry, that's that best I can do, and even a two is generous!
    • 3/5
      Essbaum writes beautifully and evocatively, and the layered timeline she employs for this novel is well chosen to mimic the theme of inevitability in the story. Characters and their development fell flat for me--for Anna at least this is somewhat expected, since she is struggling with adjustment, depression etc, and perhaps the surrounding flat characters are meant to be seen through Anna's eyes. The use of landscape and local customs and words to make the reader see both the beauty and alienation of immersion in a new place was deftfully done. However, some of the "non-English speakers employing the wrong word but actually serving to mimic Anna's inner turmoil" was a bit heavy handed and unbelievable--a lover meaning to ask "Is something wrong?" says instead "Is something immoral?," etc. The choices of Anna's character are also unbelievable to me, and a lot of what she was upset about throughout the book could have been so easily rectified, adjusted, dealt with...but Essbaum contined to have her make stupid choices without much in the way of motivation, or a clear idea of why she is choosing the destructive thing instead of anything else. The twists at the end were just cruel. Essbaum rightfully tried to use subtlety when dealing with Anna's depression, but I think the publishers should have made clear in the jacket copy that this is a book about depression (and not just book-selling salacious affairs) it would reorient the conversation to mental health and not just fidelity (which is just a symptom and not the disease here). Overall this was a satisfying read, and I enjoyed Essbaum's writing for the most part.
    • 4/5
      I first heard about Jill Alexander Essbaum's novel when it was mentioned as the next Fifty Shades of Grey, which pretty much made me dismiss it out of hand. Then I began to run into laudatory mentions, including in The New York Times Book Review podcast, and a review here by a reader whose opinion I think highly of. So when I saw it in the bookstore, I had to pick it up and read it right away. It really, really is not like Fifty Shades of Grey. The protagonist, Anna, lacks agency, preferring to just go along with whatever anyone with a stronger personality suggests. She gets married and has three children without putting much thought into it and, now living in Switzerland, near Zurich, she lives as a stay-at-home mom, not so much by choice, but simply because she hasn't made an effort to do anything on her own. She neither drives nor has a bank account. Her mother-in-law does a large part of the childcare duties, leaving Anna adrift and depressed. She eventually, at the urging of her husband, begins therapy and, after nine years in Switzerland, begins learning German. She falls into various affairs, and it's here that things begin to get messy for Anna. She keeps the affairs to herself, of course, but they adds a level of chaos to a life she already has no control over. Hausfrau is told solely from Anna's perspective, which is often frustrating and myopic. She's entirely consumed by her own unhappiness, and is unable to care about the feelings of those around her. Essbaum manages to pull this off; Anna is not a sympathetic character but she is understandable and her actions, or lack of action, make sense. And Essbaum's descriptions of being a foreigner in a strange land are written with the eye for detail of someone who has been in that position. The story jumps around in time, but this works well. What is less effective are the scenes between Anna and her therapist. Sometimes the writing in these snippets is extraordinary, but too often the questions Anna asks are so trite as to be silly. Anna's no deep thinker and is committed to living an unexamined life, which is an integral part of her character, but it does make these encounters the dullest moments of the book. There's a watching-a-train-wreck-happen feel to this book, as from the inside of her head, the reader sees Anna fail to take action or fail to express herself over and over again.
    • 5/5
      Shockingly honest. Incisive prose. BAM.
    • 4/5
      Now this woman had a problem! I didn't like anyone in the book yet I wanted to see how it all turned out. There is no closure at the end except the surety that whatever comes will not be good. The main character was sabotaging herself at every turn. I really dislike people who do that.
    • 2/5
      I don't usually mind bleakness and depression, but this book was painful to read. Others have said the main character's unlikable, but I think she's not in a fit state to be judged. She's deeply depressed and has remarkably little agency.
    • 5/5
      Hausfrau is the story of Anna a Housewife she lives in Zurich Her Husband is a Banker and they have three Children. She is a native American and followed Her Husband back to Zurich when he said he felt She would make him a Good Wife. She has lived there seven years and is just now learning the language because Her Husband said she must. She is deeply unhappy and she alternates between some startingly insightful observations about herself. She has always been unhappy and felt unsettled but she has no idea why. She loves yet loathes living in Switzerland she feels isolated so she has affairs in a desperate attempt to feel something. Her story is enhanced by the details of her sessions with her Swiss therapist and her German language lessons. A very clever well written book .I won a copy in a Good Reads Giveaway.
    • 2/5
      An incredibly infuriating read. I found myself drawn in the self destructive cycle of Anna's life but I couldn't help but spend a lot of the time cringing. I could cope with the sex scenes but not with the lack of any backstory to explain why Anna was so self destructive. That might say more about me as a reader than it does about the book, but anyway.. I couldn't go past page 200.
    • 5/5
      The narration is as perfect as Switzerland. If you are a fan of Tolstoy's Anna you'll find the protagonist sadly familiar and similarly unknowable. The author knows her way around the lonely chambers of a woman's heart, and takes the reader on a devastating and unflinching tour of it.
    • 5/5
      Terrific story. May well put me off visiting Switzerland!
      Very well written. Very well read, although the Scottish and Welsh might disagree.
    • 3/5
      Life is too short: read Nell Zink's The Wallcreeper instead.
    • 4/5
      I know there is angst in the world and people feel alienated and sad but this was a bit indulgent in the beginning. It has its moments. No other ending was possible.
    • 5/5
      The narration is just hypnotising. Amazing voice artist. You cant interrupt this book, so you keep doing whatever mindless stuff to do you have accumulated, just to have an excuse.
    • 2/5
      Anna is an American living in Switzerland for nearly a decade, thanks to her marriage to Bruno, a Swiss native. They have three young children and on the outside, Anna has a idyllic life - a loving husband, a nice home, beautiful children. But inside, she is wrecked with turmoil and depression. She feels isolated in Switzerland, a country where she still barely knows the language despite having resided there for so long. Anna enrolls in German classes and also embarks on a series of affairs, but nothing seems to appease what ails her.

      I had read positive reviews of this book in several places and decided to give it a try. It was slow going at first, and I almost set it aside in exchange for some books that interested me more. I won't lie - I wish I had. There's just something about this book that irritated me to no end. It's true that Anna is not a particularly likable character - she cheats on her husband and doesn't seem to give much to her children - but that's not exactly it. I almost wish the book had started earlier in Anna's life, so we could potentially understand why she'd become this unstable, depressed housewife, or hausfrau, as our title indicates. We're told she hates living in Switzerland, but is that really it? She's surrounded by a stock of predictable characters - her callous husband, her socialite friend, her oblivious lovers... no one in the novel seems like a fully-formed character and, as such, I had trouble really caring about what happens to them. I probably felt the worst for Anna's three kids.

      There were definitely parts that hurt me to read, but overall, the book seemed flat and pointless. The ending irritated me. I'd give it a 2.5 stars overall, but still - rather than having sympathy for Anna - I found myself annoyed with her and the entire book.
    • 3/5
      Although the prose is lovely, this book just wasn't my cup of tea. I think it will have a lot of appeal to a lot of people, I'm just not one of them.
    • 3/5
      This book focuses on Anna, an American living in Switzerland with her Swiss husband and children, who is suffering from depression. Like her analyst I want to shake her to snap out of it. She goes through the motions of trying to make things right by seeing a therapist and trying to make friends, but is never honest with herself if she wants to get better.This book reminded me of a modern version of The Awakening. A woman with little choices or independence where we don't know much about her background. I didn't have much patience with her although I know it is possible to get stuck in the kind of life she has where she feels the only choice she has is to not make any decisions.I found the imagery and allusions meant to represent her situation, whether fire or the german language, to become tedious after awhile. They felt forced as a way to make a narrative of an everyday person more enlightened. Also, I find other people's dreams very boring, whether in real life or novels, but I know this is the jungian aspect of her therapy. I wondered if Zurich and all the towns were described badly or if it is just because I've never experienced it that I felt the in-depth descriptions of streets and neighborhoods were distracting.
    • 4/5
      In equal parts I loved and hated this book. For as unlikable and frustrating as Anna is, she has way of making a reader fall under the spell of her passivity. Anna finds herself at 38 married, living in Switzerland, with three children. Her misery leads her to psychoanalysis in a futile attempt to free herself of the poor choices she thinks are her fate.
    • 4/5
      I'm a little uncertain as to how I felt about this book. The author pulled me in with the main character's introspection, the foreign setting, language references, and the well-developed mood and tone of the story. On the other hand, I didn't like the main character and was appalled at the choices she made. It is a depressing story, but offers a lot to think about.
    • 4/5
      I finally realized why the book felt familiar about halfway through it. It is a retelling of Anna Karenina, although I'm not sure the author and her publishers are marketing it as such. Anna Benz is an American expatriate living in Switzerland with her Swiss husband and their three children. She is bored with her life, so bored that she cannot begin to pull herself from the stupor of her day to day existence, although she tries by attending German classes, meeting with her Jungian therapist, and having affairs with almost every man she meets. These activities are interspersed throughout the story in brief paragraphs. I was bored by the Jungian philosophy, and fascinated by the German grammar lessons. I can see the reverse being true for other readers. I was intrigued by Anna, despite her selfishness, knowing that she was due to crash and burn. Like a car wreck there was no way to look away from the events that you knew were coming, and with the lovely writing, and interesting characters the story moved along well. By the end, I was getting more and more annoyed with Anna, but I wanted to do nothing but read what was happening to her. A great novel, and I look forward to reading more fiction from this author in the future.
    • 2/5
      Hausfrau is the story of Anna an American housewife living in Switzerland with her family. It is a story of Anna trying to find her way. Decent premise but poorly done. The plot is predictable. The characters are not very likable. I feel like Essbaum was attempting a modern day Anna Karenina and failed.
    • 5/5
      I didn't think I was going to like this much, but it's actually wound up being one of my favorite books of the year so far! It features one of my least favorite tropes (middle-aged married woman who is bored and has an affair) so I was all set going in to slog through it, but the writing is engaging and the plot winds up being both a contemporary riff on Anna Karenina and an exploration of Swiss cultural dynamics and the lives of American expats. There's a lot going on here, all beautifully presented or implied, and I've caught myself returning to it mentally several times over the past few days since finishing it.