“Shame is psychic extortion. Shame lies. Shame a woman and she will believe she is fundamentally wrong, organically delinquent. The only confidence she will have will be in her failures. You will never convince her otherwise.” says Doctor Messerli, the Swiss shrink Anna, the protagonist of Jill Alexander Essbaum’s brilliant, coruscating, debut novel, HAUSFRAU.
A modern day Madam Bovary or perhaps more akin to Anna Karenina, implicitly and tellingly sharing the same first name, Anna Benz, stands bluff to unsatisfied spouse through the birth of two sons to sink into adulterous activity.
A young wife alien to her husband’s country of Switzerland, Anna is an American, whose settled married look sits as well as her unsettled resettlement to the picture perfect Zurich suburb of Dietlikon. Continue reading Hausfrau
