Step by step to adultery
In her poetry and in her debut novel, “Hausfrau” (Random House: 336 pp., $26), Jill Alexander Essbaum rides an edge of sexual tension. The story of an American wife in Switzerland who begins making some questionable decisions, the book has been compared to both “Madame Bovary” and “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Although the novel is set in the present, its protagonist, Anna Benz, inhabits a
kind of 19th century of the soul. Barely conversant in German, she is marooned in a small town with her distant (albeit hunky) Swiss husband, disapproving mother-in-law and three young children. Anna seeks relief from her isolation in a series of extramarital affairs, which rapidly escalate beyond her control.
Essbaum, who has published several poetry collections and teaches in the UC Riverside Low Residency MFA program, spoke by telephone from her home in Austin, Texas. Is “Hausfrau” your first foray into fiction, or have you always written fiction along with poetry?
I wrote the requisite bad-girl high school fiction, along with the requisite sad-girl high school poetry. When I was in college, I wanted to write novels. But I found I really liked the challenge of poetry, of trying to say things in a certain shape. And actually this novel is very formal in its shape: There are three sections, each about the same length, each with a birthday party in it. They kind of rhyme with each other, like stanzas. I didn’t do that to make a statement. It’s an organizing principle. It’s like having the people from Crate & Barrel come to your house and
organize your closet. Did you encounter any challenges in writing a novel that your experience with poetry made harder? Or easier?
In poetry I don’t have to worry about plot, setting or characters. I let one word inform the next. I always warn my students against coming at their writing already knowing what they want to say. That’s like the Lego kits that have the picture on the front of what you’re building, rather than the ones when I was a kid that were just a bunch of different Legos.
That philosophy really helped me in writing the book. I wrote it word by word. ... When I didn’t know what would happen next, I just chased the next word. I’ve heard early feedback, and people are saying they don’t like Anna as a character but that they feel a lot of sympathy for her, and I would like to think it’s because I was able to follow her step by step. Have you been surprised by readers’ animosity toward Anna?
It never occurred to me that people wouldn’t like her. ... From the minute I started writing her, I was obsessed with her. As I wrote toward her ending, she would show up in my prayers, because she felt so present. Of course I see why people don’t like her. Her choices are terrible. That said, there isn’t a single person among us who hasn’t done something that we really wish we hadn’t, or something that we can’t undo. We’re all only a couple of clicks away from making a decision that would really change our lives. Do you think it takes a particular kind of courage for a woman in our culture to write about sex?
It’s weird territory. ... Here’s how I approach writing: If you don’t push the envelope to the edge of the table, then why are you moving around the envelope at all? But you can push it off the table, and then it’s too far. So there’s that lip, that edge, that interests me. ... I think some things are probably better left unsaid, but in a book like this, you have to say them. How do you feel about comparisons between your book and “Fifty Shades”?
I’m OK with it! Clearly it’s the sex that people are connecting. There’s a lot less rope in my book. But there are lots of ways that a woman can be in bondage, and not all of them are unpleasant for her. And also, I don’t begrudge a book its success. Wasn’t “Madame Bovary” looked at as scandalous at the time?
I love the first line of the book, “Anna was a good wife, mostly.” Do you remember where you were when you thought of that?
I wish I did. But, you know, for the longest time that was not the first chapter. There was a chapter in front of it, and I could never get it to work. Finally I was on a walk one day and I thought, “Duh. That’s because it’s not the first chapter.” And after a year of trying to make it sound right, I cut it. So here’s your literary lesson, kids: Let go of what you think you have to have.