WHAT? Reduced to a clementine? How dare he? Clearly she is a peach or a cherry. Obviously, he needs punished. And it’s completely justified because it’s coming from a place of LOVE. He has always admired how rigorously I note the words I need for my translations in my small notebooks. I have a dozen of them. The red notebook is for terms related to politics and societal debates, the blue one is for terms related to nature and the environment. (That one’s been written in the most; in particular it contains the names of climbing plants in English gardens and the different species of oak trees). They are all placed side by side on the shelf above my desk, but today I notice that one of them has disappeared. I look everywhere for my yellow notebook, which contains vocabulary related to medicine and the history of the sciences, in vain.

As I read more and more of this book it reminded me of those men youtubers/tiktokers that say women should live for men. These are the women they want. Well sans the cheating. J'ai été séduite d'entrée de jeu par les descriptions de la vie domestique de la narratrice - que voulez-vous, j'adore m'imaginer les maisons des autres, alors une belle maison bourgeoise, une vie de prof d'anglais/traductrice... (ce qui d'ailleurs aurait pu être ma vie si je n'avais pas dévié de cet objectif après mes études) Mais très vite, le malaise arrive : la passion folle, calculée, de la narratrice effraie, plus qu'elle ne donne envie. The winner of France's First Novel Prize in 2021, My Husband builds on the premise of hits like Gone Girl and Fates and Furies--how well can you really know your spouse?--and adds the tension and creepy obsession of You. The result is an irresistible read--compelling, tense, and engaging, infused with sly subversive humor, and told in an utterly original voice that makes it unforgettable. At forty years old, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she's never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated. What a wonderfully tense, obsessive, enveloping novel—almost like a feminist, introspective spin on Fatal Attraction! Ventura’s deftly spun debut is a sharply observed dissection of marriage that will haunt you for days.”— Virginia Feito, author of Mrs. March

He must be tested. He must follow her (unspoken) rules or there will be (extreme passive-aggressive) consequences. Ventura's cleverly constructed, one-sided portrait of a marriage delivers a breathtaking conclusion that is as unexpected as it is deviously brilliant.” - Shelf Awareness As relayed by her husband, the adjectives that best describe her are very beautiful, cold, in love, and observant. I've seen this compared to Patricia Highsmith but I'd say there's nothing like that amount of plot here, and would see this springing from writers like Celia Fremlin with their acute antennae to the minute and chilling power shifts in the home. So, for me, this has vague gestures to the psychological 'thriller' but it's far more muted, plotless and internalised than that. There's something too of Forbidden Notebook and even a less dense version of Lessing's classic The Golden Notebook without the external politicised setting. Whatever allegiances the individual reader finds, this is a fantastically crazed narrative with important things to say about the politics of love. If you obsessively reread (or, let’s be real, rewatched) Gone Girl, then this darkly comic French novel about a woman so deeply besotted with her picture-perfect husband that she goes to some truly crazy lengths to keep him within her clutches is almost sure to resonate with you.”— Vogue

Determined to keep their relationship perfect, she meticulously prepares for every encounter they have, always taking care to make her actions seem effortless. She watches him attentively, charting every mistake and punishing him accordingly to help him improve. And she tests him - setting traps to make sure that he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met. TW: Language, depression, anxiety, toxic relationships, cheating, graphic sex scenes, toxic parent relationships, drinking Ramadan’s exacting translation holds the reader in her grip, 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 all the way to the explosive ending. It’s a bold and memorable first outing." Determined to keep their relationship perfect, she meticulously prepares for every encounter they have, always taking care to make her actions seem effortless. She watches him attentively, charting every mistake and punishing him accordingly to help him improve. And she tests him—setting traps to make sure that he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met. Wow, this is brilliant portrait of a woman subjected to all the cultural pressures of western love discourses and unhinged by her obsessive love for her husband. Actually, there's something more twisted and chilling about the book than that as we finally get the husband's perspective in an epilogue.In her world, everything must be perfect and she obsesses and over-analyzes every little thing people say, do, or look, most especially her husband. Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage meets Ruth Rendell. . . . My Husband possesses a dark, clinical and raspy humor. With a very well done final twist, as unpredictable as it is Machiavellian, you won’t want to read this vaudeville just once." — Le Nouvel Obs 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." Starred Booklist 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.”— Booklist (starred review)

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/openbook/article/91837-love-hurts-in-maud-ventura-s-debut-novel.html

One of the most daring, provocative, unnervingly intimate thrillers I’ve read in years. It’s a glass of Sancerre, crisp and cold and dry – and the more you swallow, the more you’ll lose your balance. Few writers besides Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith can evoke domestic unease with such sangfroid; fewer still can make it such delirious fun. My Husband is the novel for any woman with a husband. Or perhaps for any man with a wife. Merveilleux, Mademoiselle Ventura!”— A. J. Finn, #1 NYT bestselling author of The Woman in the Window