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Sto caricando le informazioni... Hausfrau: A Novel (originale 2015; edizione 2015)di Jill Alexander Essbaum (Autore)
Informazioni sull'operaUna donna pericolosa di Jill Alexander Essbaum (2015)
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. A downer of a book with an unlikeable yet sympathetic protagonist. I knew how it was going to end. I mean the author named her character Anna and has her mention in the first chapter the only reason Swiss trains run late. AND YET, when I got to the end of the novel I was like fuuuuuuuuuck. Anyway, a good read that left me feeling a bit icky and anxious. I'm going to go watch cartoons or something... Received as a test read from NetGalley. To be honest, most of the free ebooks I receive from various places are too totally horrible to write a review about. I don't want to be mean, but, hey, proofreading, people!!!! So I read the first few pages and then give up in despair. This book is an exception. From the moment I started it I was pulled in, dragged into the scene, experiencing life in a foreign country, isolated and ignored. Maybe it's because I've been there, with a similarly busy husband, but I could truly identify with the character, Anna, as she struggles to find a reason for her existence. True, she could maybe have played with her kids more, or otherwise lived a bit more, but as a character in search of treatment for depression, she makes bad choices again and again, spiralling downwards into a bigger and bigger mess. Her self-centred focus is shockingly strong, and yet, I felt sympathy for her, trapped within herself as she is. The writing is well done - mine, the kindle edition, occasionally confused me for a moment with jumps in settings and times. This might be less of a problem in a hard-copy version. However, the author's writing was so clear that I was confused for only a moment. Well worth a read. I found myself setting aside time to read it, and also pounding on my Kindle when the pages wouldn't turn fast enough. This book is about the unraveling of the protagonist and it is painful to witness. I almost gave the book 4 stars, so guess my final rating is 3.5 stars. Essbaum tells the story in very short segments that are not linear in time, perhaps recreating her character Anna's thoughts and feelings. Did I enjoy reading this book? No. I do think the author showed a lot of insight and empathy with all the characters (something Anna lacked), but reading about a self immolation (not literally-psychically) is unpleasant. There were lots of tidbits regarding Jungian analysis that were quite interesting.
This is a focused tale, immersed in the complicated thoughts and days of the ailing heroine … Anna isn't very likeable. This doesn't make her, Essbaum's insightful literary invention, any less interesting. …the tale of a morose, insufferable American narcissist…Ms. Essbaum’s prose […] can have all the charm of a sink full of dishwater. A powerful, lyrical novel, Hausfrau plumbs the psychology of a lonely, unfaithful housewife and unravels the connections between our words and our deeds. Hausfrau is sometimes ponderous, and its imagery rather laboured […] in spite of all this, it succeeds. It is that impossible thing: a page-turner about depression. Rather like her own experience of those sexual assignations, we find much here that is interesting, less that engages. But it’s refreshing to discover a female protagonist who is allowed to be quite such a casual wife, such a detached mother, such an unromantic lover. Premi e riconoscimentiMenzioniElenchi di rilievo
"Anna Benz, an American woman in her thirties, lives in comfort and affluence with her Swiss banker husband and their three young children in a picture-perfect suburb of Zurich. Despite the tranquility and order of her domestic existence, Anna is falling apart inside. Isolated in a foreign country and a faltering marriage, Anna begins three adventures to restart her life: Jungian analysis, German language classes, and a series of extramarital affairs whose consequences she cannot foretell. Hausfrau is a daring novel about marriage, fidelity, morality, and most especially, self: how we create ourselves and how we lose our selves and the sometimes disastrous choices we make to find ourselves"-- Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Già recensito in anteprima su LibraryThingIl libro di Jill Alexander Essbaum Hausfrau è stato disponibile in LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Discussioni correntiNessunoCopertine popolari
Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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Author Jill Alexander Essenbaum has given readers a complex tale of Anna, an American woman living with her Swiss husband and their children in Switzerland. Anna struggles to fit in to this Swiss life, doesn't speak the language, and has no close friends. It is clear very early in the book that Anna is suffering from a deep depression, which seems to go unnoticed by her husband. While in this depression Anna makes a series of destructive decisions.
This book provides a a good look at one of the ways depression can manifest itself. As I see Anna make one terrible choice after another, part of me wants to slap her, like Cher does to Nicholas Cage in "MoonStruck ("Snap out of it!"), knowing full well that she doesn't need a slap, but rather medical treatment along with a hug, friendship, and to feel like someone really cares about her.
Many reviewers have written about what a loathsome character her husband is. I don't actually see him that way. I don't see him as intentionally cruel to Anna, I see him as completely oblivious -- not that this is actually a positive attribute. I'm reminded a zinger from the Dowager Countess in the last season of Downton Abbey, "Men notice nothing."
Finally, this book is being marketed as "Madame Bovary meets Fifty Shades of Gray." I guess they're doing this to try and lure in the Fifty Shades readers (yes, there is sex in Hausfrau). No doubt some segment of the Fifty Shades readers will be disappointed here to find out that Hausfrau: 1) has a plot, 2) has well-developed, multi-dimensional characters, and 3) isn't computer-generated drivel. Rather than "Madame Bovary meets Fifty Shades" think of "Hausfrau" as a modern-day "Anna Karinina" ( )