My Husband by Maud Ventura
“Even after thirteen years of marriage, that phrase still has the same effect on me. I tremble with pride when I announce, "my husband works in finance," in the teacher's lounge; when I tell my daughter's teacher in front of the school gates, "my husband will be picking up the children on Thursday" ... My husband has no name; he is my husband, he belongs to me.”
Is it possible to love your partner too much? This is the central question of Maud Ventura’s darkly funny debut novel, My Husband. Originally published in France in 2021, the novel was a bestseller and winner of France’s Prix du Premier Roman (First Novel Prize). In 2023, the novel reached English-speaking audiences, thanks to a translation by Emma Ramadan. My Husband is a trip into the darkest depths of one woman’s mind, exploring the lengths she will go to be loved.
The unnamed narrator’s feelings towards her husband of thirteen years cannot be summed up as merely love, or adoration. Even obsession does not quite convey the way she completely and utterly devotes her entire life to securing her husband’s happiness and affection. Her job, her friends, even her two children, are just inconveniences — obstacles threatening to come between her and her husband.
The novel opens with a seemingly idyllic morning within the family, before the husband utters the ever-ominous words: “We need to find a moment to talk … it’s important.” Instantly, the wife is convinced that her marriage is over; there is no other conceivable possibility in her mind. From here, the story rewinds to one week earlier, and is told over the course of those seven days, tension building as we lead up to these fateful words.
Our narrator completely encapsulates the “unhinged woman” trope — seen in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Ottessa Moshfegh’s novels — without feeling unoriginal. To the rational-minded, her actions are often absurd and hard to believe. Waiting for her husband to come home on Monday evening, the narrator picks out a novel “to create a certain look.” She plays with the lighting, switching off the main bulb in favour of a lamp and lit candles, places her steaming cup of tea beside her, folds her legs with an appearance of carelessness, and opens the book to a random page, awaiting his arrival. As My Husband unfolds, we see that her entire life plays out like this; staged moments, perfect scenes painstakingly curated, to ensure her husband’s idea of her is exactly as she intends it.
His love for her, their marriage and two seemingly perfect children, are never enough to satisfy her, and in this way the novel explores what it means to be a woman, wife and mother under modern patriarchy, expected to be satisfied in one’s role:
“For fifteen years I've lived with the permanent and paradoxical affliction of being loved back—of passion with no apparent obstacle. I can't hope for anything more, I can't hope for anything better, and yet the void that I feel is immense, and I'm always waiting for him to fill it. But what could possibly fill what is already full?”
Each supposed slight that her husband commits against her has a corresponding punishment. Meticulous and manipulative, she keeps careful records of everything: in her eyes this is the only logical way to keep the relationship balanced and fair.
Despite her many less-than-admirable qualities — including, but not limited to, being a generally awful mother and an all-round cold and calculating person — the narrator retains an essence of likability; her entire life boils down to the fact that she just wants to be loved as deeply and wholly as she loves, a plight that many readers will relate to.
The novel’s twist ending is divisive. Personally, I am in two minds about it. On the one hand, I think it risks cheapening the whole novel, and rendering it less believable. On the other hand, however, it does cast certain elements of the plot in a new light, and it is fun in a campy, ‘gotcha!’ kind of way. If you find yourself against the ending, however, don’t let the last page ruin the fun you’ve had along the way.
Short chapters, coupled with the perverse pleasure of watching a car crash unfold, mean the pages fly by, and I polished this one off in a couple of evenings. Ventura’s prose is pacy and playful, and the narrator’s voice is distinct. The first-person, present tense perspective keeps you hooked, and the narrator’s ruthlessness had me glued to the pages, wondering just how far she would go.
Macey Smart is a writer and editor from lutruwita/Tasmania. She recently graduated from the University of Tasmania with First Class Honours in English, with a research project on women and food in contemporary literature. You can find her work in Togatus, where she was the Deputy Editor for 2023, as well as swim meet lit mag and Playdough Magazine.