Holly Gramazio

"A novel about a woman who one day comes home to find her attic is magic and producing an endless supply of interchangeable husbands"--

A Novel

The Husbands

Laura Dobie

This is the main thing people do in the suburbs, Lauren sometimes thinks: they list different ways to get into town.

In a nearby bar she discovers the differences between the tedious London craft beer scene and the tedious Denver craft beer scene, namely (1) people in the US will try to have conver- sations with you even if they're not trying to pick you up, and (2) the beer contains substantially more alcohol, so perhaps you will let them.

Anyway, you can't send a husband back because he makes you too good. Especially not a husband who - she doesn't love him, not yet, but she likes seeing him when she gets home, she likes lying in bed with him, the sex now that she's got used to their range of equipment is excellent, if on the serious side, and she even likes it when he shows her a paragraph from some informative article he's reading. She wants to be better for him, for this life they've made.

On the sixth of January she leans over in bed and kisses him, and grabs his hair, and he pulls her on top of him and laughs, and she rolls them both back the other way, and as the morning proceeds she discovers that in this world she owns, and uses during sex, a vibrator. She doesn't quite take to it, but there's no denying its efficiency, the pressure cooker of orgasms. Perhaps, like a pressure cooker, it takes practice to get the best out of it.

This is so true it made me laugh out loud!

They get a weekly veg box which is great in theory but in practice she doesn't always want to tackle a knobbly celeriac or hyperspecific squash.

They laugh. ‘Yeah, sometimes I turn up and someone speaks to me in French and I go straight back into the attic. Honestly, I should just learn - I did try but every time I change worlds all my Duolingo progress resets.’

Okay. She tells too-clean husband that she's going out for a walk, and heads away from the railway station and up the hill to the park, where she dodges happy families and dog-walkers, heads to the lake, looks at ducks. She's vague on the details of duck mating but she knows it's unpleasant and involves a corkscrew-shaped penis, so arguably things could be worse.

She's been too vague in her search, too unclear about what she wants from a husband. It's time to focus. No swingers. No am-dram enthusiasts. No open-mouth chewers. Just a nice man to keep for a week and take to a wedding.

You can't stay married to someone for ever just because they climb out of your attic one afternoon.

You're okay with Amos and Lily, right?' Elena says, pointing. ‘Neither of them knows the other guests, and we were at their wedding so we had to invite them. But I've got a special table for people who had kids and regret it- if you want, I could put them there and give them a miserable time.’

An architect, though! What a perfect job for a husband. Ambitious yet concrete, artistic yet practical, glamorous yet without an industry-wide drug problem.

Thoroughly enjoyed; a real sense of authorial confidence in the pacing and characterization.

            This book was bizarre, from start to finish.  I wanted to like it, because the premise was intriguing, but when it was all said and done, I was intensely unsatisfied. 

            Lauren left for a party completely single, then came home slightly inebriated at the end of the night to discover her husband.  A husband that didn’t exist prior to leaving for the night, and she had no idea how he got there.  There follows, husband after random husband, descending from the attic, what can only be described as chaos.  She liked some of the husbands, others she was indifferent towards, and she genuinely detested some of them.  She discovered a husband like her, who changes spouses every time he crawls into a wardrobe (which begs the question:  why does he keep crawling into wardrobes?).  Her relationships outside of the husbands remain similar, though a few of them are altered in questionable ways.  She also goes through a few different jobs, but one of them is more constant than the other.  Every time a new husband emerges from the attic, her life is a little bit different than the one she lived with the prior husband. 

            Again, the premise was very interesting!  But there were a few crucial questions that never got answered.  I feel strongly that the WHY of the situation should have been addressed, but it never was.  What was the point to this weird attic situation?  In a good rom-com, the attic would have been to teach her some sort of existential lesson, but that didn’t seem to be the case here, especially considering she never truly “fell in love” with any of them.  It could have been the opportunity to teach her how “the one that got away” was the man she was supposed to be with.  Nope, that didn’t happen either.  It wasn’t even a lesson in “taking care of yourself and the rest of your relationships will fall into place.”  So if all of the typical literary tropes didn’t fit, what was the whole point?  The author never addressed the original of the man-switching attic either. 

            I enjoyed some of this book, but upon completion, I was just disappointed that I got zero answers.  I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy the books that have a clear ending that’s tied up with a nice, pretty bow.  This one didn’t have that. 

Kristen Claiborn

            This book was bizarre, from start to finish.  I wanted to like it, because the premise was intriguing, but when it was all said and done, I was intensely unsatisfied. 

            Lauren left for a party completely single, then came home slightly inebriated at the end of the night to discover her husband.  A husband that didn’t exist prior to leaving for the night, and she had no idea how he got there.  There follows, husband after random husband, descending from the attic, what can only be described as chaos.  She liked some of the husbands, others she was indifferent towards, and she genuinely detested some of them.  She discovered a husband like her, who changes spouses every time he crawls into a wardrobe (which begs the question:  why does he keep crawling into wardrobes?).  Her relationships outside of the husbands remain similar, though a few of them are altered in questionable ways.  She also goes through a few different jobs, but one of them is more constant than the other.  Every time a new husband emerges from the attic, her life is a little bit different than the one she lived with the prior husband. 

            Again, the premise was very interesting!  But there were a few crucial questions that never got answered.  I feel strongly that the WHY of the situation should have been addressed, but it never was.  What was the point to this weird attic situation?  In a good rom-com, the attic would have been to teach her some sort of existential lesson, but that didn’t seem to be the case here, especially considering she never truly “fell in love” with any of them.  It could have been the opportunity to teach her how “the one that got away” was the man she was supposed to be with.  Nope, that didn’t happen either.  It wasn’t even a lesson in “taking care of yourself and the rest of your relationships will fall into place.”  So if all of the typical literary tropes didn’t fit, what was the whole point?  The author never addressed the original of the man-switching attic either. 

            I enjoyed some of this book, but upon completion, I was just disappointed that I got zero answers.  I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy the books that have a clear ending that’s tied up with a nice, pretty bow.  This one didn’t have that. 

husbands husbands everywhere and not a drop to drink 

abi a

An entertaining read that was a bit like The Midnight Library meets Sliding Doors. Had me laughing out loud in places.

The premise of this book was so interesting, & I enjoyed quite a bit of it, but it started getting very repetitive after a while, & I’m not sure I liked how it ended 

The Husbands A Novel

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