An astonishing work of fiction from France's "best young novelist" (The New Yorker), the internally acclaimed author of "Pig Tales." The premise is simple: the narrator's husband leaves to buy a loaf of bread and never returns. Like the classics By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept and Dear Diego, Marie Darrieussecq's My Phantom Husband chronicles a woman's poignant descent into madness brought on by the loss of a great love. Combining a poet's exquisite metaphors with a painter's mesmerizing visions, Darrieussecq astounds readers with her exceptional imagination and stylistic genius. Surreal yet universal in its understanding of grief, this haunting novel reminds us why the New York Times hailed this young author as "fascinating and original."
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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.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
one stiff novel to read,
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?,
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,
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.
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