Mon mari

From the outside, the narrator's marriage looks flawless. She is a beautiful, cultured teacher and translator; her husband is handsome, wealthy, and devoted; they have two children and a comfortable Parisian life. But inside her head, love has become a full-time obsession. Over the course of a single week, she records every sign of her husband's affection and every perceived coldness, keeping meticulous accounts and devising small, secret punishments to keep the balance of desire tilted her way.

Maud Ventura's award-winning debut, a bestseller in France and winner of the CWA Dagger for crime fiction in translation, is a coolly comic and deeply unsettling monologue. As the narrator's rituals grow stranger, the reader is left to wonder how much of her marriage is real and how much is the elaborate architecture of her own longing, right up to an ending that reframes everything. A sharp, disquieting study of desire, control, and self-deception.