What would you think if your husband, one day, with no word of explanation or warning, vanished? When would you begin to panic - the first hour, the first night?

A deceptively simple story about a deserted woman, My Phantom Husbandis Marie Darrieussecq's eerie follow-up to Pig Tales, showing her to be a writer of great subtlety and depth. When her husband goes to buy fresh bread and never returns, the young narrator's life changes for ever. Night after night she has to learn to be alone, to sleep alone, to live in a space she has shared with a man for seven years. Yet who was he, her husband, and did they really have much in common? Why can't she remember her love for him - or even what he looked like? Dragged into a world of visions, she is besieged by childhood terrors - monsters behind the furniture, vampires floating around in the dark, strangers walking in other rooms. She begins to see her husband, or an apparition of him. Is he a supernatural visitation or the product of madness - or a figment of her guilty conscience? My Phantom Husband is a profoundly unsettling parable about the way love appears and disappears, about the absences and evasions that can lie hidden in any relationship.

About the Author
Marie Darrieussecq was born in 1969 in Bayonne, France. She is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. Her debut novel, Pig Tales (1996), was published in 34 countries and became the most popular first novel in France since the 1950s. Her second novel, My Phantom Husband (1998), became an immediate bestseller. Her third novel, Breathing Underwater, prompted Francis Gilbert in The Times to declare that 'there are very few writers who may have changed my perception of the world, but Darrieussecq is one of them'. Her fourth novel, A Brief Stay with the Living, is published in June 2003. Helen Stevenson is a piano teacher, writer and translator. She has translated works by Marie Darrieussecq, Alice Ferney and Catherine Millet, as well as several books by Alain Mabanckou. She grew up in Yorkshire and lives in Somerset.

Reviews
"'A work of absolute genius and, quite simply, the best book I have ever read for The Bookseller.' Rob Cassy, The Bookseller 'After the grotesque comedy of Pig Tales, Darrieussecq has taken a step further, refined her talent, and produced one of the best books of the year.' Alex Clark, Guardian"



Book Information
ISBN 9780571203369
Author Marie Darrieussecq
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 135g
Dimensions(mm) 205mm * 135mm * 10mm