Ideally, the moment you get married is not the moment you start wondering whether your husband might one day leave you and file for divorce. Yet that is exactly where the female protagonist of My Husband by Maud Ventura begins.
The novel follows a wife spiralling into an all-consuming obsession with the idea that her husband no longer loves her. Set across the course of a single week, the story unfolds day by day, starting on a Monday, as we follow her internal monologue and emotional state. Ventura transforms the mundane into something deeply unsettling. A song choice or an order at a restaurant becomes, in the narrator’s mind, a clue to a devastating truth.
She dissects every gesture and every word with surgical precision, analysing them millimetre by millimetre in an attempt to uncover his real thoughts and feelings. Her mood swings are extreme, dictated entirely by what she believes she has detected in her husband’s behaviour or lack of it. It is not a word I would usually use to describe a woman, but as a fictional character, she feels undeniably unhinged.
Her love for her husband is so overpowering that she is convinced everyone around her must recognise how extraordinary he is and, by extension, how extraordinary their relationship must be. Their love story eclipses everything else in her life. She gradually loses empathy for those around her, including her own children, because in her mind, nothing can rival the importance of her husband and their relationship.
She is aware, to some extent, that her feelings border on obsession and repeatedly tries to justify her destructive and unhealthy behaviour, attempting to convince herself that her reactions are normal.
Yet the arguments she presents feel deeply unsettling rather than reassuring. The lengths she goes to in feeding this obsession are, at times, shocking. There were moments when I could not quite believe where the story suddenly went.
What makes the character particularly compelling is that you occasionally sympathise with her. At times, you believe she deserves more than what she receives. At the same time, she arguably receives all the love she needs, just not under the precise conditions she demands. Or does she?
Then comes the ending.
I knew a twist was coming, there had to be one, but I was not prepared for it. I am usually very good at spotting what lies ahead, especially in crime novels, yet this one genuinely caught me by surprise and reframed everything that came before it.
My Husband is a dark, unsettling, and strangely addictive read that offers a disturbing glimpse into a mind trapped in a cycle of its own making. It will make you think, it may make you want to shout at the narrator, and it will likely stay with you after you have finished it.
I actually started writing this review halfway through reading because I did not want to forget the many brilliant moments scattered throughout the book. There is far more that could be unpacked and discussed, which, in my view, makes this an excellent choice for a book club. At some point, however, I had to stop, and believe me when I say this review was once nearly twice as long because I simply could not stop talking about it.
The novel was first published in French as Mon mari in 2021, before being translated into English and later into German as Mein Mann. The novel is available in both print and e-book formats.
