My Husband

Starred review from May 22, 2023
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. Agent: Marleen Seegers, 2 Seas Agency.

June 1, 2023
Ventura's first novel explores love's darker alleyways through the eyes of a 40-year-old Frenchwoman who's obsessed with her husband. One Sunday, after becoming aware that her 15-year marriage may be about to implode, the unnamed narrator, a part-time teacher and English-French translator, relives the previous week. She defines each day by color and general mood; so Monday is blue, a day of beginnings, while quarrelsome Tuesday is black, and good luck Friday, green. But all revolve around the narrator's excessive passion for her husband (referred to only as "my husband" as a declaration of possession). A modern Emma Bovary aiming her passionate energy toward her husband instead of a lover, she knows "I have to control myself" to avoid appearing "unseemly." Insecure in her husband's moneyed, bourgeois world, she relies on organization and rules. She teaches herself etiquette from a book. She fills notebooks with lists. Each day she notates both reasons she adores him--good looks, charisma, breeding, earning power--and a litany of his abuses: kissing her cheek instead of lips, holding her hand too briefly, choosing a clementine to describe her in a game with friends. She's created rules her husband breaks without knowing they exist and doles out what she considers corresponding punishments that range from ignoring his calls to having meaningless sexual assignations. The reader sees the narrator's husband only through her neurotic, nit-picking lens. Is he controlling and oblivious or devoted both to her and their two children (whom she finds distractions from the marriage)? Self-consciously erudite with her references to Phaedra and Duras, the narrator is also witty; a riff on how to translate "sweep me off my feet" into French is particularly charming. Beyond eccentric, she is easy to laugh at but also a discomforting object of condescending pity. And yes, there's a somewhat contrived twist at the end that reading groups will love to discuss. Writing about control as much as love, Ventura describes a marriage from hell that works, however oddly.

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Starred review from June 1, 2023
Debut novelist Ventura depicts a seemingly normal, upper-class French couple: sophisticated, intelligent wife and charming, gentle husband. The book is told from the perspective of the unnamed wife, and the reader learns through her (occasionally) unreliable narration that something darker and more haunting lurks just beneath the surface of the idyllic veneer. While they have been married for 15 years, can she really be sure that her husband loves her? Can she finally devise the perfect combination of espionage and record keeping, romance techniques, and plans for his punishment to make certain that her husband's love for her is real? My Husband is an original take on the suspense genre, depicting and using the daily realities of marriage to build tension and grow the reader's sense of thrill. Ventura very cleverly explores themes of paranoia, class, and, above all, obsessive love through the couple's everyday neuroses, building their significance (and their darkness) to keep readers in suspense. The translation by Ramadan adeptly conveys both the setting and the growing tension. Fans of Caroline Kepnes' You (2014) or Gillian Flynn will find My Husband to be a new, satisfying, and unnerving take on the relationship-suspense genre

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