{"product_id":"9780812997538","title":"Hausfrau","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e“\u003ci\u003eMadame Bovary\u003c\/i\u003e meets \u003ci\u003eFifty Shades of Grey\u003c\/i\u003e.”*\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAnna was a good wife, mostly. \u003c\/b\u003eFor readers of \u003ci\u003eThe Girl on the Train\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Woman Upstairs\u003c\/i\u003e comes a striking debut novel of marriage, fidelity, sex, and morality, featuring a fascinating heroine who struggles to live a life with meaning—“a modern-day Anna Karenina tale.”**\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eONE OF \u003ci\u003eTHE HUFFINGTON POST\u003c\/i\u003e’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2015\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eAnna 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.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAdvance praise for \u003ci\u003eHausfrau\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“With an elegance, precision, and surehandedness that recalls Marguerite Duras’s \u003ci\u003eThe Lover\u003c\/i\u003e and Anita Brookner’s \u003ci\u003eHotel du Lac, \u003c\/i\u003eJill Alexander Essbaum gives us this exquisite tale of an expatriate American wife living in Switzerland and her sexual and psychic unraveling. \u003ci\u003eHausfrau\u003c\/i\u003e stuns with its confidence and severe beauty, its cascading insights into the uses of erotic life and the nature of secrets, the urgency of compulsion and the difficulty of freedom. This is a rare and remarkable debut.”\u003cb\u003e—Janet Fitch, #1\u003ci\u003e New York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author of \u003ci\u003eWhite Oleander\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“Over a century after the publication of \u003ci\u003eMadame Bovary\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eAnna Karenina\u003c\/i\u003e, poet Essbaum proves in her debut novel that there is still plenty of psychic territory to cover in the story of ‘a good wife, mostly.’ . . . The realism of Anna’s dilemmas and the precise construction of the novel are marvels of the form. . . . This novel is masterly as it moves toward its own inescapable ending, and Anna is likely to provoke strong feelings in readers well after the final page.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“I was mesmerized by this book. \u003ci\u003eHausfrau\u003c\/i\u003e creates a complete, engrossing, and particular world where nothing is as easy as it should be, according to the hopeful stories we tell ourselves. It’s a corrective novel, taking character, destiny, and our choices as seriously as a novelist can.”\u003cb\u003e—Sheila Heti, author of \u003ci\u003eHow Should a Person Be?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A racy mix of \u003ci\u003eGone Girl\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eFifty Shades\u003c\/i\u003e.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eGrazia\u003c\/i\u003e (U.K.)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e*\u003ci\u003eSunday Express\u003c\/i\u003e (U.K.)\u003cbr\u003e **\u003ci\u003eGlamour \u003c\/i\u003e(U.K.)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Random House Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47020651479280,"sku":"9780812997538","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780812997538_p0.jpg?v=1763742939","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780812997538","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}