This month’s read, ‘The Husband’s by Holly Gramazio, was not enjoyed by about 75% of the group.
It would appear that it is a novel that polarises opinion. The 75% who didn’t enjoy it really didn’t like it and the other 25% loved it.
The story follows Lauren, a thirty-something single woman living in London, whose attic starts generating an infinite supply of husbands. But when you can change husbands as easily as a lightbulb, how do you know whether the one you have now is the good enough one, or the wrong one, or the best one? And how long should you keep trying to find out?
This is Lauren’s dilemma, which some of us found amusing, creative and thought-provoking and which the majority found monotonous, frivolous and uninspiring.
The book’s main theme is about making alternative choices in life and whether those choices change your life and in what way.
This concept has been tackled by other popular films and books in recent times, the ones that come to mind are Sliding Doors, Groundhog Day and The Midnight Library (as read by our Book Club in August 2024). The group felt that the alternatives listed above tackled the magical realism genre in a much more superior way.
We talked about the author for a small part of the meeting and discovered that Holly Gramazio is a games designer who came up with the concept for ‘The Husbands’ whilst sitting with friends “swiping left or right” on dating apps. Having read the book, this made sense to us. We could understand that this is the type of book that she would be perfect to write, it had the feel of a computer game.
Nevertheless, and even though we could all agree that it was a good first novel that had provoked an interesting Book Club discussion, there was no getting away from the fact that the majority of the group did not enjoy the book.
Send it back to the attic …
The next book to be read will be "In Too Deep" by Lee Child.
This will be discussed on Friday 14th November 2025.