Hausfrau (Essbaum) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Hausfrau...seems positioned to ride a wave of comparisons to the erotic stylings of E. L. James....[but] the two are very different. Ms. Essbaum has far more sophistication, but she tethers it to the tale of a morose, insufferable American narcissist who is bored by her Swiss husband.... But Ms. Essbaum hasn’t got much of a plot in mind either, so the book meanders from sexual liaisons—which quickly develop a perfunctory sameness and have nothing like the superlucrative kinks of Ms. James’s books—to psychoanalysis appointments to those dreadful moments when Anna has time to slow down and contemplate herself.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


Madame Bovary meets Fifty Shades of Grey.
Sunday Express (UK)


There is much to admire in Essbaum's intricately constructed, meticulously composed novel, including its virtuosic intercutting of past and present. It is equally impressive that Essbaum is able to retain our sympathy, if just barely, for her lost and self-involved protagonist—at least until the novel's heavily foreshadowed, but still startling, conclusion.
Julia M. Klein - Chicago Tribune
 

We’re in literary territory as familiar as Anna’s name, but Essbaum makes it fresh with sharp prose and psychological insight.
San Francisco Chronicle


For a first novelist, Essbaum is extraordinary because she is a poet. Her language is meticulous and resonant and daring.
NPR’s Weekend Edition
 

A powerful, lyrical novel.... Hausfrau boasts taut pacing and melodrama, but also a fully realized heroine as love-hateable as Emma Bovary and a poet’s fascination with language.
Huffington Post
 

[Hausfrau] feels more contemporary, subjective, and just plain funny than classical bourgeois ennui. Imagine Tom Perrotta’s American nowheresvilles swapped out for a tidy Zürich suburb, sprinkled liberally with sharp riffs on Swiss-German grammar and European hypocrisy.
New York Magazine
 

Brain-surgically constructed to fascinate you, entertain you, and then make you question what a life lived with meaning looks like—all with a sense of poetic discipline and introspection.
Los Angeles Magazine
 

(Starred review.) Over a century after the publication of Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, 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.
Publishers Weekly


An American in her thirties, Anna Benz has a picture-perfect life, with glowing children, a gorgeous house, and a Swiss banker husband. Of course, what looks that good on the outside is often rotten on the inside, and Anna launches a series of affairs. This debut by a recipient of the Bakeless Poetry Prize and two NEA literature fellowships is an in-house favorite
Library Journal


[Essbaum’s protagonist] shares more than her name with that classic adulteress, Anna Karenina, but Essbaum has given a deft, modern facelift to the timeless story of a troubled marriage and tragic love in this seductive first novel.
Booklist


Between caring for three children, visiting a Jungian analyst and taking a German class, Anna wouldn't seem to have much time for extramarital liaisons, but like her namesake, Madame Karenina, she manages.... There's plenty of tension—will Anna get caught?—but it's hard to be invested in the life of a woman who doesn't care much about it herself. A smart book that entertains page by page but doesn't add up to anything larger.
Kirkus Reviews