Novel set in ZURICH (and great author interview)
- Book: Hausfrau
- Location: Zurich
- Author: Jill Alexander Essbaum
“Pain is the proof of life”
A novel that is as sharp, sparkling and multi faceted as a diamond, and as glistening as the glittering peaks of the Swiss Alps, it is incisive as it is “Glacier carved”.
Anna Benz, an American, is married to Bruno and lives with him in Dietlikon, Zurich. To all intents and purposes they have the trappings of a well-to-do banking family in a suburb of this desirable city. They have three children – Charles, Viktor and Polly Jean, and mother-in-law Ursula, is waiting in the wings just down the road, ready to babysit at the drop of a resentful hat.
Anna is having analysis with the Jungian, Dr Messerli, with whom she has sessions exploring the nature of therapy, neurosis and the meaning of life. They talk about some aspects of Anna’s life and Anna brings her dreams for interpretation. Dr Messerli is a sympathetic analyst but there is not really much engagement from either side. They discuss how Anna can steer herself into trajectories that force her “to participate more fully with the world“. And that is the fundamental issue for Anna, she is like an observer of her own life, with compulsions and predilections that drive her into situations that incur dire consequences.
Anna is emotionally hollow, disengaged from life, and in her search to be cosseted, she is driven to find connections through sexual encounters. She sleepwalks into relations with multiple partners, searching for what? Closeness, bonding, love? It is not sexual addiction, she is more like a blind puppy nuzzling for someone to enable her to engage with her otherwise grey life. Her husband has a tendency towards curt and sometimes aggressive outbursts, which further consolidate her precarious grip on propriety and reality. She has no sense of self and is like a willing pawn in the sexual dance, over which she seems to have little control. Whilst she looks to others to give her meaning, she slides further down the black hole of life – a life in a foreign country where the people, the customs and the language are all alien and cold, and all serve to perpetuate her role as outsider. “The Alps are the door I am locked behind“, she ruminates.
The author is exceptionally skilled with words and she clearly delights in word play. And that is one of the many pleasures of the book. Whether it is her playing around with German words, musing on the “rapid, scuttling Schwizerdütsch” (Swiss German) or pondering the proximity of homophones like Bern and burn, succeed with secede, it is all deftly tackled.
This is indeed one woman’s journey through married life, but there are multiple layers that feed into her story and which add fabulously contoured dimensions. Anna attends German classes at the Migros Klubschule. The German language serves as a base for Schwizerdütsch, and the play on words and their double edged meaning are a wonderful construct. Dr Messerli is sharp, as sharp as a knife in her observations, and her name ironically means little knife in Swiss German. One of Anna’s amorati is Stephen Nicodemus, whose surname is found in the Bible, a devotee of Christ; there is much debate about personal determination and the nature of the devil/religion in some of the moral questions that arise.
Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary and now Anna Benz (coincidence that she takes her initials from her forebears? I think not).
Zurich is a character in its own right and serves like a cocoon to the story. Towards the end of the book, Anna walks across the innumerable bridges that straddle the river in the city, she spends a lot of time at the Hauptbahnhof (see our photos above); at one point the family takes the boat across the Zürichsee; she shops in Migros, the supermarket with ubiquitous outlets (to the strains of 80s euro muzak on a loop)…. The tremendous sense of location anchors the story in a very Swiss setting, so anyone who knows the country will recognise the acute observations and will be able to look in on Anna’s story with empathy and familiarity.
You will discover what “Was fuer ae huere Schweinerei” means in the book but you will never want to use the phrase if you visit Switzerland. Enjoy this extraordinary literary page-turner!
This review first appeared on our blog and includes a great author Q and A.
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