My Phantom Husband [Paperback]

Marie Darrieussecq (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2001

A deceptively simple story, by the author of "Pig Tales", about a deserted wife whose loneliness and fright become tangible. When her husband goes to buy bread but never returns, the narrator's life falls apart. She enters a distorted world, mesmerized by visions and besieged by childhood terrors.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It was physics, the physics of the moment, and also the physics that describes the laws of memory, absence, and disappearances, explains the narrator of this small gem of a novel. Darrieussecq (Pig Tales) follows a French woman as she falls into a surrealistic gap after her realtor husband goes out for a loaf of bread and doesnt come home. At first she expects his imminent return. Then, in growing alarm, she calls the police, then her mother-in-law, her mother and her friend Jacqueline. The police are polite but evasive: runaway men, they suggest, frequently fail to return, or else return washed up on a beach, devoured by little sea animals. Darrieusecqs narrator (never named) goes through the motions of her daily life, muses on her failure to be a caring and fruitful wife, and enters a suspended animation born of waiting. Like rising waters, her unconscious floods her life with vivid sea images and life simplified almost to cells breaking: from now on anything was possible, eclipses, poltergeists, the projection of black holes even into private domiciles. She returns to a sort of sanity through the strong, healing touch of a Youangui masseuse. After more enticingly fluid digressions on the nature of consciousness, and on the unavoidable distance between any two people (even lovers), the husband returns: what will she do now? Tender, extraordinarily nuanced and very French, this novel looks at the world of love like a drop of rainwater under a microscope. Allens translation produces sinuous, intricate sentences, fitting for the shifting dimensions of erotic phenomenology and gentle tragedy that this intense, essayistic novel inhabits.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This second novel by Paris native Darrieussecq (Pig Tales, LJ 3/15/97) is a short, intense inner monolog written after the narrator has accepted the abrupt disappearance of her husband. Through it we experience the narrator's complete disorientation as the finality of her husband's departure and its ramifications become apparent. The disappearance unearths her grief at the previous losses of her father and prematurely born children. The shock of this new degree of isolation throws the narrator into a state of heightened sensitivity, causing her to experience sound, colors, and physical sensations to a surreal degree, almost as though she were living in several dimensions at once. Although this might signify insanity, the narrator always seems to be aware of what is around her and what she is doing. Darrieussecq weaves humorous passages into this essentially tragic novel, giving her narrator a depth of character beyond that of a mere figure of pity. This compelling work is highly recommended for larger public and all academic libraries.ARebecca A. Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 153 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber Ltd (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571203361
• ISBN-13: 978-0571203369
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,153,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars one stiff novel to read, April 26, 2000

By 

"teddylan" - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Phantom Husband (Hardcover)

As a matter of fact,this is not a very interesting book for all readers.(pig tale would be an entertaining one).On account of the fact that in this story,lengthy part was utililised by the author to portray the transformation of the mind of the wife whose husband has been missing. At the very beginning,she's so extremely worried about her husband.But then she became anguished,disgruntled,and even had some visions not real after she realised she can't find out where her husband is.As everyone knows,it's more unbearable to us to be abandonned by our close relatives than to know they were dead,and this reflects the reality too.To be honest,you may get bored by reading this story.However,great chance upon us contemplating the purpose of our existence.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Genius or Gibberish?, June 27, 2002

By 

Bookster (Minnetonka, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Phantom Husband (Hardcover)

Is this a brilliant work of fiction or 150 pages of gibberish? This little book can be a tough read. Is it because of its French origin and something is lost in the translation (the French are so different from us), or is it because as a man reading it I missed the point of the female writers nuances? I have not decided yet. From the description on the cover I was expecting the story of a desparate search for a missing person. But the action (if you could call it action) takes place in the narrators fractured mind, and half way through the book you begin to question if there ever was a husband. Maybe a second reading would bring more insight into the character. If you are looking for a book with a good plot, action, dialogue and character development, look elsewhere.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars one stiff novel to read, April 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: My Phantom Husband (Hardcover)

As a matter of fact,this is not a very interesting book for all readers.(pig tales would be an entertaining one).On account of the fact that in this story,lengthy part was utililised by the author to portray the transformation of the mind of the wife whose husband has been missing. At the very beginning,she's so extremely worried about her husband.But then she became anguished,disgruntled,and even had some visions not real after she realised she can't find out where her husband is.As everyone knows,it's more unbearable to us to be abandonned by our close relatives than to know they were dead,and this reflects the reality too.To be honest,you may get bored by reading this story.However,great chance upon us contemplating the purpose of our existence.