A book many critics are predicting will be the big summer read, as well as the successor to 50 Shades of Grey, is Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum. Set in Switzerland, the main character, Anna, is married to a banker but she finds her life boring and no wonder as Swiss bankers are notoriously circumspect about what they do and a friend of mine who once lived there, complained that most things closed at 10 o’clock. Add to that the chocolate-box scenery, the absence of litter and the general conformist nature of the inhabitants, the stage is set for her to do something different and she does, by taking a succession of lovers. Their encounters are described in graphic detail in the book, you have been warned!
You might read it and wonder, as one Amazon reviewer did, why she bothered moving to Switzerland and continued to stay with her husband if life was so dull. It fact, Anna’s life mirrors the author’s own experience (with the exception of the lovers), moving there when her husband studied Jungian psychoanalysis and was as bored and rode the trains a lot, just like Anna in the book, but eventually moved back to the US and divorced her husband.
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