The Husbands by Holly Gramazio is the next book for the book club, that I can't seem to meet with. I've fallen asleep before the meetings the last two times.
It's speculative fiction where a woman comes home to a different husband. It could be horror because she's so scared at this alteration of reality, but it's more like Groundhog Day. Reality changes enough so that it makes sense, and she has a pictures of the surprise husband on her phone lock screen, and in her photos. There are changes, but not enough to be a completely different world. It becomes a mystery, who is my husband? It's a rorschach for who she wants to be. In the 3rd chapter we learn the mechanism, if he goes into the attic, a new guy comes down and the walls and whatnot change. Some are more handsome than others, one is naked, they have different accents.
My first thought was of a German movie called I’m Your Man (2021) (Ich bin dein Mensch). In that movie, a woman is given a companion android. The men love it, but she's wary, and busy. She has great sex with him, but she sends him back. Though that's not the end of the movie, and I'm not giving it away. The novel The Husbands changes reality to see what shakes out. What do we learn just like in the German movie.
Note: I asked Gemini 3 if speculative fiction is the genera of this novel. It said high concept speculative fiction, but also magical realism first. I asked if there was a male version of this type of novel, and there isn't. To say you don't write with AI is to say you don't google things and research on the internet. But I don't have AI write my blogs, that seems silly to me, I want to write them. I'm not put upon, and forced to write papers of my own choosing like in school, just trying to get things done. Anyway, if you rewrite a AI paper, even just one change, does that mean it's not your own? I think there are levels of ownership. In some ways we're not alone and if you read acknowledgements, many people alter texts because of editors and readers. AI is not another person, but it's some kind of input. Even the squiggles that note misspelled words is AI. Do you say you are AI free, and you don't correct your spelling? I've never tried to write a minimalist paper for college with AI, with the AI doing the heavy lifting. I also wonder if humans are changing the way they write to not seem like AI.
Usually I divide the pages by the days till book club, but I have failed to keep pace quite a lot so I'm just going to read it and hope I get it done before book club.
So this book is an inverse Jane Austin. In Austin you spend the whole novel trying to get a husband. In this novel there's a new husband every time they go up to the attic. She had to trick the mean one into going up to the attic, and once the shock of this improbable universe wears off, she leans into it. Enjoy the coffee in the garden.
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