How many spouses does one woman need?
THERE'S something delightfully addictive about Holly Gramazio's fiction debut, The Husbands,a bottomless champagne flute of a novel (with no hangover).
In her long-time work as a successful game designer, Gramazio says she creates “art that gets people interacting with their surroundings in new ways”. The Husbands winks at a world of endless choices – dating apps, food deliveries, streaming, shopping, games – and wonders, why not romantic partners? (The AI Department is certainly at work on this.) The 31-year-old protagonist, Lauren, is single when she returns home to her empty South London flat after a bachelorette party for her best friend. Only, Lauren's flat isn't empty. A strange man greets her by name, sighs “Fun night?” and offers to make her a cup of tea.
Lauren frantically opens her phone to call the police and is stunned to see that the lock screen is “a picture of herself, standing on a beach with her arm around the man in the doorway”. When she examines the flat moments later, it's recognisably hers. Same layout, same toaster, same view. But other things are definitely not the same – the couch colour, the wall clock, the coffee maker and especially the pictures, one of which is a wedding photo of Lauren and an unfamiliar man.
Who seems very nice, she decides the next morning, after she recovers from her hangover and he makes her breakfast and details what he's been up to: a swim, tidying the flat, helping a neighbour. Later he might work in the garden. “He sounds very industrious,” Lauren thinks. “She doesn't have a vegetable patch, but perhaps he's brought it with him.” She checks her phone and finds myriad messages to and from the husband, whose name is Michael and who, like her, wears a wedding ring. Lauren texts the neighbour, and her sister, Nat, and determines that they, too, know Michael, who is in this universe Lauren's husband.
Until whoops, he climbs the ladder into the attic to change a light bulb, and a different, “gratuitously handsome” man climbs down. He, too, is wearing a wedding ring, and the walls are now a different colour. She immediately sends Husband No. 2 back into the attic to check if someone else is there, and before you can say “Wait, that one was pretty hot,” he's gone for good.
Husband No. 3 briefly emerges (less good-looking, “Monsters, Inc.” slippers), goes back up to check on something, and bing! Here's Husband No. 4.
This is the simple, dizzying premise of The Husbands: life (married life, anyway) as an endless Choose Your Own Adventure game, only with ordinary men instead of ant people and vampires.
Lauren's world is undeniably ours. She can move about in it, on her own, with friends or her husband of the moment, though she tends to stay put in London. Her friends and family members are (mostly) the same. Her flat remains the same, though the decor changes, along with the fridge contents and the garden.
Gramazio sidesteps many arguments that The Husbands might be construed as an outdated fantasy of What Women Want.
Still, one genuine heartbreak haunts Lauren. And halfway through the novel, a husband appears who, like Lauren, is a frequent flier between romantic partners.
Bohai has magical husbands and wives; he's also, enviably, able to travel between continents with each romantic shift. His friendship with Lauren continues even after he climbs back into the attic (he drops by whenever he lands in London) and provides some needed ballast just when Lauren (and the reader) begins to feel that this non-stop carousel of husbands could become wearisome and even depressing. (For those who can't get enough, Gramazio has created a handy Husband Generator on her website.)
Gramazio wisely provides no explanation for what's happened. Yet this isn't Groundhog Day or a time loop. Weeks pass, then months, as Lauren ponders her future, romantic and otherwise.
As the anniversary of the magic attic approaches, the novel's tone darkens. The revolving door of possible husbands opens on to an equal number of possible lives, possible Laurens.
A few of them do things that the original Lauren probably couldn't imagine doing. Will Lauren consider the same?
Your response to the ending of this exceptional novel may depend on your experience of partnered life. Or just life, full stop. Because in this world, one life is all we get. You have to stop, and start, somewhere.