{"title":"Jill Alexander Essbaum","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"hausfrau-book-jill-alexander-essbaum-9781447280798","title":"Hausfrau","description":"Haunting and elegant, Hausfrau is the exceptional debut novel from the prize-winning American poet, Jill Alexander Essbaum.    Anna was a good wife, mostly . . .   Anna Benz lives in comfort and affluence with her husband and three young children in Dietlikon, a picture-perfect suburb of Zurich. Anna, an American expat, has chosen this life far from home; but, despite its tranquility and order, inside she is falling apart.  Feeling adrift and unable to connect with her husband or his family; with the fellow expatriates who try to befriend her; or even, increasingly, her own thoughts and emotions, Anna attempts to assert her agency in the only way that makes sense to her: by engaging in short-lived but intense sexual affairs.  But adultery, too, has its own morality, and when Anna finds herself crossing a line, she will set off a terrible chain of events that ends in unspeakable tragedy. As her life crashes down around her, Anna must then discover where one must go when there is no going back . . .","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49522383061265,"sku":"GOR006471096","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49572476715281,"sku":"GOR007709224","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53176974475537,"sku":"GOR006542759","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1447280792.jpg?v=1751434789"},{"product_id":"hausfrau-book-jill-alexander-essbaum-9781447280811","title":"Hausfrau","description":"Hausfrau is the exceptional debut novel from the prize-winning American poet, Jill Alexander Essbaum. 'The Book that will have everyone talking' Cosmopolitan  Anna Benz, an American in her late-thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno - a banker - and their three young children, in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich.  Though she leads a comfortable life, she is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with Bruno, or even her own feelings, Anna tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German language classes, Jungian analysis, and a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises her.  But she soon finds that she can't easily extract herself from these relationships. Having crossed a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back . . .","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49533010903313,"sku":"GOR007449871","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50531507601681,"sku":"GOR012374638","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52150623895825,"sku":"NLS9781447280811","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1447280814.jpg?v=1751445757"},{"product_id":"hausfrau-book-jill-alexander-essbaum-9781447280804","title":"Hausfrau","description":"Haunting and elegant, Hausfrau is the exceptional debut novel from the prize-winning American poet, Jill Alexander Essbaum.    Anna was a good wife, mostly . . .   Anna Benz lives in comfort and affluence with her husband and three young children in Dietlikon, a picture-perfect suburb of Zurich. Anna, an American expat, has chosen this life far from home; but, despite its tranquility and order, inside she is falling apart.  Feeling adrift and unable to connect with her husband or his family; with the fellow expatriates who try to befriend her; or even, increasingly, her own thoughts and emotions, Anna attempts to assert her agency in the only way that makes sense to her: by engaging in short-lived but intense sexual affairs.  But adultery, too, has its own morality, and when Anna finds herself crossing a line, she will set off a terrible chain of events that ends in unspeakable tragedy. As her life crashes down around her, Anna must then discover where one must go when there is no going back . . .","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49632686801169,"sku":"GOR012618971","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50904402624785,"sku":"GOR006844234","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1447280806.jpg?v=1753686041"},{"product_id":"hausfrau-book-jill-alexander-essbaum-9780812987294","title":"Hausfrau","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e BESTSELLER * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY \u003ci\u003eSAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eTHE HUFFINGTON POST, \u003c\/i\u003eAND \u003ci\u003eSHELF AWARENESS\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e* \"In \u003ci\u003eHausfrau, Anna Karenina\u003c\/i\u003e goes \u003ci\u003eFifty Shades\u003c\/i\u003e with a side of \u003ci\u003eMadame Bovary\u003c\/i\u003e.\"--\u003ci\u003eTime\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"A debut novel about Anna, a bored housewife who, like her Tolstoyan namesake, throws herself into a psychosexual journey of self-discovery and tragedy.\"--\u003ci\u003eO: The Oprah Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Sexy and insightful, this gorgeously written novel opens a window into one woman's desperate soul.\"--\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAnna was a good wife, mostly. \u003c\/b\u003eFor readers of \u003ci\u003eThe Girl on the Train\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Woman Upstairs\u003c\/i\u003e comes a striking debut novel of marriage, fidelity, sex, and morality, featuring a fascinating heroine who struggles to live a life with meaning.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eAnna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno--a banker--and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with the emotionally unavailable Bruno or even with her own thoughts and feelings, Anna tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German language classes, Jungian analysis, and a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises even her.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e But Anna can't easily extract herself from these affairs. When she wants to end them, she finds it's difficult. Tensions escalate, and her lies start to spin out of control. Having crossed a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Intimate, intense, and written with the precision of a Swiss Army knife, Jill Alexander Essbaum's debut novel is an unforgettable story of marriage, fidelity, sex, morality, and most especially self. Navigating the lines between lust and love, guilt and shame, excuses and reasons, Anna Benz is an electrifying heroine whose passions and choices readers will debate with recognition and fury. Her story reveals, with honesty and great beauty, how we create ourselves and how we lose ourselves and the sometimes disastrous choices we make to find ourselves.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eHausfrau\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Elegant . . . There is much to admire in Essbaum's intricately constructed, meticulously composed novel, including its virtuosic intercutting of past and present.\"\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"For a first novelist, Essbaum is extraordinary because she is a poet. Her language is meticulous and resonant and daring.\"\u003cb\u003e--NPR's \u003ci\u003eWeekend Edition\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"We're in literary territory as familiar as Anna's name, but Essbaum makes it fresh with sharp prose and psychological insight.\"\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"This marvelously quiet book is psychologically complex and deeply intimate. . . . One of the smartest novels in recent memory.\"\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eThe Dallas Morning News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Essbaum's poignant, shocking debut novel rivets.\"\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eUs Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"A powerful, lyrical novel . . . \u003ci\u003eHausfrau\u003c\/i\u003e boasts taut pacing and melodrama, but also a fully realized heroine as love-hateable as Emma Bovary.\"\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eThe Huffington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Imagine Tom Perrotta's American nowheresvilles swapped out for a tidy Zürich suburb, sprinkled liberally with sharp riffs on Swiss-German grammar and European hypocrisy.\"\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eNew York\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50363564458257,"sku":"CIN0812987292VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50366255857937,"sku":"CIN0812987292G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52560746938641,"sku":"GOR007471203","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53262135492881,"sku":"NIN9780812987294","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812987292.jpg?v=1750849896"},{"product_id":"would-land-book-jill-alexander-essbaum-9781943899104","title":"Would-Land","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50993547346193,"sku":"NIN9781943899104","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52681693233425,"sku":"NLS9781943899104","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/194389910X.jpg?v=1751029295"},{"product_id":"devastation-book-jill-alexander-essbaum-9780984192816","title":"The Devastation","description":"A long-poem chapbook from the author of Harlot (No Tell Books) and a 2013 NEA Fellow in Poetry. Listen to Jill Alexander Essbaum on the December '09 edition of the Poetry Magazine Podcast. Born in Bay City, Texas, poet and editor Jill Alexander Essbaum was educated at the University of Houston, the University of Texas, and the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest. Influenced by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simon Armitage, and Sylvia Plath, Essbaum's poems bring together sex, divinity, and wordplay, blithely working with received forms and displaying a nuanced attention to rhyme and meter. Speaking to this unusual combination of themes in an interview with Eratosphere, Essbaum observed, Why the pairing of sexual and religious expression seems wrong to our post-modern American ears, I think, is because we're all (no matter what we believe or don't) direct inheritors of a Puritan heritage that disdains human physicality . in lieu of pursuits of the spirit alone. In a Coldfront review of Necropolis, critic Rick Marlatt noted, Known for their remarkable mix of eroticism and religiosity, Jill Alexander Essbaum's poems vibrate with well-proportioned rhymes, unforgettable imagery and a unique realization of form.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51010608136465,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51010611249425,"sku":"NIN9780984192816","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52455419314449,"sku":"NLS9780984192816","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0984192816.jpg?v=1751140680"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-jill-alexander-essbaum.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}