Synopses & Reviews
The premise is simple, but the story quickly becomes surreal: the narrator's husband leaves to buy a loaf of bread and never returns. Searching for him day and night, forced to explain his absence to friends and family, the unnamed narrator withdraws into a mysterious universe ruled more by image than language. In the wake of her husband's disappearance, the world becomes a strangely immaterial place, shapeless, devoid of sentiment. Once-familiar territories become terrifying: the supermarket, the beach, the bedroom. Even the wedding album has changed: her husband's face now appears altered in every shot.
An innovative, daring book on the physicality of absence, My Phantom Husband explores familiar reactions to sudden loss and the disruption of daily routine. Weaving and intricate web of exquisite metaphors and mesmerizing visions, Marie Darrieusseq once again astounds readers with her exceptional imaginations and stylistic genius.
Review
"Darrieussecq weaves humorous passages into this essentially tragic novel, giving her narrator a depth of character beyond that of a mere figure of pity." Library Journal
Review
"Darrieiussecq writes chiseled, brightly faceted sentences that evoke her heroine's contrasting emotional temblors and peculiar perceptual glints." New York Times Book Review
Review
"[A] memorable dramatization of the unknowability of those closest to us and, hence, of ourselves." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"The author is French, and her novels have caused a stir in France. This one is not a traditional fiction narrative; it's an interior monologue with ironically, given its theme little action....[B]ut this novel is far from empty as Darrieussecq describes in exquisite prose a mind succumbing to grief." Booklist
About the Author
Marie Darrieussecq's first novel, Pig Tales, became an instant international success, published in thirty-four countries. A contemporary feminist allegory, Pig Tales won Darrieusseq acclaim as France's best young novelist. She teaches in Lille.