My Husband

A few years ago every second domestic thriller came out with breathless marketing comparing it to Gillian Flynn’s bestselling blockbuster Gone Girl. But few (if any) managed to capture the same darkly sly humour; compelling, if abhorrent, narrators; or unsettling reading experience. So it’s with some trepidation that I say My Husband, from debut French writer Maud Ventura, is perfect for fans of Gone Girl. But here we are.

Taking place over the course of a single week, with each chapter corresponding to a single day, My Husband gives readers an insight into what looks, from the outside, to be a perfect marriage. But of course it is as dysfunctional as hell.

Our unnamed narrator has it all: beauty, wealth, a stunning home, two perfect children. She is also absolutely consumed by an obsession with her own husband, contorting her entire existence around him. So tightly wound that she practically vibrates, this wife spends every day carefully cataloguing and interrogating her day-to-day existence in a way that’s both pitiable and unexpectedly comic. For instance, faced with buying flowers for a friend with a new baby, she researches, ‘What kind of flowers do you give for the birth of a child?’ and then agonises over whether roses or peonies are more chic.

Slowly paced with a sinister edge, My Husband keeps the plot moving with little mysteries that are parcelled out by the closely guarded narrator: secret missions to check the letterbox unobserved, seemingly inconsequential lies, a letter that is concealed in different places around the house … The effect is a taut read that keeps you humming with low-level anxiety – and often surprised into nervous laughter.