This is a beautifully written book. Despite her beautiful family, Anna is not happy in Switzerland. She is depressed and goes through a series of affairs. But her secrets cannot stay hidden for long and soon Anna must face the consequences of her secrets. You want to not like Anna but you cannot h...
Initial reaction: I'm really surprised how much I liked this book even considering the difficult subject matters and unlikable protagonist that it showcases through the narrative. I feel like Anna's character was strongly asserted despite her moments of weakness and the expansion upon that weakness,...
If Hausfrau was a painting it would be entitled "Woman with Empty Heart." It's the kind of character study that many people will utterly loathe, others will call a contrivance. A book that does not offer a sympathetic protagonist nor deliver any semblance of happy ending is one you won't want to hau...
I only gave this three stars because of the unnecessarily crude and filthy language and sexual descriptions. I listened to the audio and some parts were so graphic, I had to fast forward and skip them. The line between porn and sexy seems to have gotten very blurred. However, the story itself will k...
Anna Benz, ex-pat American, married to a Swiss banker and living in Switzerland for 9 years has managed to have three children and run her household but not bothered to learn German or even “Switzer-Deutsch”. She gets through her days by keeping to herself. She is depressed, bored and lonely. Muc...
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 w...
I received this novel by Jill Alexander Essbaum as an Early Reviewer via LibraryThing and Random House. Anna Benz is an ex-pat living a comfortable life in Switzerland as a housewife with her successful banker husband Bruno and their three children. When we meet Anna she has been in Zurich for m...
this is an excerpt from my full review at The Fault in Our BlogsFirst of all, the synopsis calls Anna the “heroine.” I’m not sure I would call her that. She’s clearly the protagonist and narrator of Hausfrau, but her moral code is so twisted that I think she’d be more of an anti-heroine. What I like...
The first line of a novel should really draw you in and the opening of this book “Anna was a good wife, mostly” had me from the beginning. The writing style felt a little disjointed at first, as if the author wasn’t a native english speaker, or maybe this is intended as it helps the forward momentum...
Publication Date: March 26th 2015 from Pan Macmillan Source: Netgalley 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. Anna tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German languag...
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