NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, AND SHELF AWARENESS• “In Hausfrau, Anna Karenina goes Fifty Shades with a side of Madame Bovary.”—Time “A debut novel about Anna, a bored housewife who, like her Tolstoyan namesake, throws herself into a psychosexual journey of self-discovery and tragedy.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Sexy and insightful, this gorgeously written novel opens a window into one woman’s desperate soul.”—People Anna was a good wife, mostly. For readers of The Girl on the Train and The Woman Upstairs comes a striking debut novel of marriage, fidelity, sex, and morality, featuring a fascinating heroine who struggles to live a life with meaning. 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, 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. 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. 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. Praise for Hausfrau “Elegant . . . There is much to admire in Essbaum’s intricately constructed, meticulously composed novel, including its virtuosic intercutting of past and present.”—Chicago Tribune “For a first novelist, Essbaum is extraordinary because she is a poet. Her language is meticulous and resonant and daring.”—NPR’s Weekend Edition “We’re in literary territory as familiar as Anna’s name, but Essbaum makes it fresh with sharp prose and psychological insight.”—San Francisco Chronicle “This marvelously quiet book is psychologically complex and deeply intimate. . . . One of the smartest novels in recent memory.”—The Dallas Morning News “Essbaum’s poignant, shocking debut novel rivets.”—Us Weekly “A powerful, lyrical novel . . . Hausfrau boasts taut pacing and melodrama, but also a fully realized heroine as love-hateable as Emma Bovary.”—The Huffington Post “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.”—New York From the Hardcover edition.

Hausfrau: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Essbaum, Jill Alexander

United States

Random House Audio |

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, AND SHELF AWARENESS• “In Hausfrau, Anna Karenina goes Fifty Shades with a side of Madame Bovary.”—Time “A debut novel about Anna, a bored housewife who, like her Tolstoyan namesake, throws herself into a psychosexual journey of self-discovery and tragedy.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Sexy and insightful, this gorgeously written novel opens a window into one woman’s desperate soul.”—People Anna was a good wife, mostly. For readers of The Girl on the Train and The Woman Upstairs comes a striking debut novel of marriage, fidelity, sex, and morality, featuring a fascinating heroine who struggles to live a life with meaning. 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, 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. 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. 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. Praise for Hausfrau “Elegant . . . There is much to admire in Essbaum’s intricately constructed, meticulously composed novel, including its virtuosic intercutting of past and present.”—Chicago Tribune “For a first novelist, Essbaum is extraordinary because she is a poet. Her language is meticulous and resonant and daring.”—NPR’s Weekend Edition “We’re in literary territory as familiar as Anna’s name, but Essbaum makes it fresh with sharp prose and psychological insight.”—San Francisco Chronicle “This marvelously quiet book is psychologically complex and deeply intimate. . . . One of the smartest novels in recent memory.”—The Dallas Morning News “Essbaum’s poignant, shocking debut novel rivets.”—Us Weekly “A powerful, lyrical novel . . . Hausfrau boasts taut pacing and melodrama, but also a fully realized heroine as love-hateable as Emma Bovary.”—The Huffington Post “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.”—New York

Random House Trade Paperbacks

Random House]

Hausfrau

Random House LCC US

Award-winning poet Jill Alexander Essbaum takes her reader on a three-day journey through death and grief. Filled with her trademark sensuality and humor, here Essbaum also addresses issues of faith, fiercely questioning God while also trusting in the promise of resurrection.

Necropolis

Poetry

NeoNuma Arts

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."

The Devastation

Cooper Dillon Books

Enduring private misery in spite of a well-appointed life in suburban Zèurich with her distant Swiss banker husband and young children, Anna Benz experiments with unfulfilling hobbies before engaging in a series of surprising sexual affairs.

Hausfrau (Thorndike Press Large Print Peer Picks)

Thorndike Press

Discover your own wisdom about your grief
Every loss "deserves a fitting grief," Jill Alexander Essbaum assures us in The Good Grief Journal. From that beginning, she offers a path for those who grieve, whether the loss is from a physical death, a looming divorce, declining health, bankruptcy, or some other wound.
Each of the ten meditations in this journal corresponds to a stage of grief as outlined in Granger E. Westberg's classic book Good Grief, published in 1968. Millions of people have found in it validation for their grief, understanding of their feelings, and a way to live through grief and into hope.
Every meditation is followed by prompts and questions designed to help readers reflect more deeply on both the nature and effects of their loss. Scripture passages, poems, and quotes from a variety of sages and artists offer further inspiration for this journey of discovery.
The meditations and prompts in this journal are intentionally nonspecific. They are adaptable to suit both the nature of the loss as well as the needs of the grieving person.

The Good Grief Journal: A Journey toward Healing

Parenting & Relationships

Fortress Press

Good Grief: The Guide and Journal, a two-book pack, offers Good Grief, a foundation for understanding the natural process of grieving, along with The Good Grief Journal, a pathway for expressing, exploring, and growing from a significant loss. 
Good Grief has helped millions of readers find comfort and rediscover hope after loss. It identifies ten stages of grief--shock, emotion, depression, physical distress, panic, guilt, anger, resistance, hope, and acceptance--but, recognizing that grief is complex and deeply personal, defines no right way to grieve. 
The Good Grief Journal offers a meditation on each stage of grief, followed by prompts and questions to help journalers reflect deeply on the nature and effects of their loss. Scripture passages, poems, and quotes from a variety of sages and artists offer further inspiration for this journey of discovery. 
The meditations and prompts in this journal are intentionally nonspecific. They can be adapted to suit both the nature of the loss and the needs of the grieving person. 
Whether mourning the death of a loved one, the end of a marriage, the loss of a job, or other difficult life changes, readers will want to return to these wise resources year after year as they are changed by their journey.

Good Grief: The Guide and Journal

Westberg, Granger E.

This three-book collection, Good Grief: The Complete Set, offers Good Grief, a foundation for understanding grief; The Good Grief Devotional, a collection of valuable insights for those who grieve; and The Good Grief Journal, a pathway for expressing, exploring, and growing from a significant loss.
Good Grief has helped millions of readers find comfort and rediscover hope after loss. It identifies ten stages of grief--shock, emotion, depression, physical distress, panic, guilt, anger, resistance, hope, and acceptance--but, recognizing that grief is complex and deeply personal, defines no right way to grieve.
In The Good Grief Devotional, fifty-two reflections on the stages of grief examine what each stage means for the reader's self-understanding and relationships with other people, creation, and God.
The Good Grief Journal includes a meditation on each stage of grief, followed by prompts, Scripture passages, poems, and quotes from a variety of sages to help journalers reflect deeply on their loss.
Whether mourning the death of a loved one, the end of a marriage, the loss of a job, or other difficult life changes, readers will want to return to these wise resources year after year as they are shaped by their journey.

Good Grief: The Complete Set

Christianson, Brent D.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Essbaum, Jill Alexander. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Essbaum, Jill Alexander

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Essbaum, Jill Alexander. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Hausfrau: A Novel

Hausfrau: A Novel

Hausfrau: A Novel

Hausfrau

Necropolis

The Devastation

Hausfrau (Thorndike Press Large Print Peer Picks)

The Good Grief Journal: A Journey toward Healing

Good Grief: The Guide and Journal

Good Grief: The Complete Set