The Book Breakdown: The Husbands
What writers can learn from this contemporary novel with a speculative twist
Welcome to The Book Breakdown, in which we look at a published novel and discuss the elements that make it a good book. This isn’t a book review in which I critique a novel; it’s a spoiler-free look at what works well for this particular novel, so that we can sharpen our own storytelling skills.
I read Holly Gramazio’s contemporary novel The Husbands during a time when I really needed something fun and light. In fact, I’d call it the perfect book to take on vacation (or to give you a vacation from the daily grind). I absolutely loved it, and I’m not alone in that feeling: the novel was named one of the best books of 2024 by The Washington Post, NPR, People, Parade, and Bookriot.
Let’s look at several elements that make this novel work, so we can hone our skills as storytellers. I’ll keep this as spoiler-free as possible in case you haven’t yet read the book.
What’s the book about?
Lauren comes home from a night out with the girls to find a man in her flat—her husband. This is a shock, since she doesn’t have a husband. He seems to have come down from the attic, so she sends him back up.
Another husband comes down from the attic, a completely different man she’s supposedly been married to for years. Not only that, but Lauren notices that some things about her flat have changed. When she searches her phone, she finds out that actually, quite a few details about her life are different.
In fact, every time she grows tired of a husband and sends him back into the attic, another husband comes down and Lauren finds herself living another version of her life. Soon, Lauren starts wondering—which version of her life does she want to live? And will she ever find the one perfect husband?
What genre does it belong to?
The Husbands is a funny, contemporary novel with a speculative twist.
It feels like women’s fiction, adjacent to romantic comedy but with less focus on romance and more on Lauren’s fantastical predicament.
It could probably sit on the shelf with time loop novels, because Lauren has to keep adjusting to a new life every time she changes husbands, but technically time keeps moving forward.
What makes it a good story?
📱The Speculative Twist As A Metaphor
At first, Lauren is confused and shocked to find out that she’s married and that if she sends her husband back into the attic, another will come down to take his place. But once she accepts the situation, she realizes she can be as picky as she likes. She can immediately send back any husband whose clothing or facial hair doesn’t suit her, or whose mood seems dour, or who doesn’t seem like he’d be the perfect date to the wedding she’s soon to attend.
At one point, Lauren compares her attic to a dating app—she can swipe away husbands just as easily as most women swipe away dating options. The novel’s speculative twist is instantly easy to grasp, and even feels oddly relevant to modern life, all because it seems to serve as a metaphor for modern dating.
We get to see this metaphor play out in the most exaggerated way possible, because we get to see how choosing a new husband also means choosing a new self. With each new husband, Lauren has different hobbies, jobs, and friends, which feels accurate to how our choice in a spouse affects our whole life.
💰Wish Fulfillment
The exaggerated metaphor not only allows for an exploration of modern dating, but it also makes for a very entertaining story. At one point, Lauren finds that she’s married to very rich husband, and that her flat is only their rental property. He takes her to a country estate, where she spends her days swimming in the indoor pool and enjoying the extensive gardens.
Some of Lauren’s husbands are especially attractive, the perfect dates to take to a wedding or a party. Some are highly attentive and sweet. One teaches her about gardening, which helps her discover a new love of plants. In a story about exploring life-changing options, we want to see these dream scenarios play out and imagine them happening to us.
Sometimes life goes terribly wrong for Lauren, such as when she realizes [spoiler alert] the very rich husband spies on people with cameras, or when she figures out that the most attractive husband [spoiler alert] is having an affair with the neighbor. But even these disasters are a lot of fun to read about, the equivalent of listening to your best friend tell you horror stories about a bad date.
🤵♂️Exploration of the High-Concept Premise
Most of the fun of any story that bends one element of reality is in exploring the limits of the premise. While the opening chapters see Lauren trying to find a nice husband to live with, the story soon explores the idea that Lauren’s life changes with every new husband. That means if she calls in sick to work, blows through her savings, and sleeps with her neighbor, she can send her husband into the attic and shift into a new reality where none of the disasters in her previous life can touch her.
The story also explores other limits of the premise:
What if a husband Lauren doesn’t like refuses to go into the attic?
What if Lauren loves a husband but being married to him means she’s stuck in a job she hates?
What if by changing her own life for the better, Lauren changes her friends’ lives for the worse?
What if Lauren wants to keep a husband but he accidentally wanders into the attic on his own?
What happens to the husbands after Lauren sends them into the attic?
The real joy of the story is in exploring the rules of the speculative twist, and Gramazio explores just about every possible aspect. Every time the story starts to seem played out, it veers into new territory.
💍Thematic Ending
It’s not terribly difficult to come up with a fun, high-concept premise. You could probably think up a dozen if you sat down for a while and devoted yourself to it. Where the difficulty lies in writing this kind of story is in finding a satisfying ending.
In fact, Gramazio claims that The Husbands originally had three different endings! The one she chose lands perfectly for me because it resonates with the main question the twist explores: If you can cycle through endless choices for life and love, how do you decide which to stick with?
The novel might have used the same speculative twist to explore completely different territory. Lauren’s magic attic might have allowed us to think about our terrible tendency to treat people as if they’re interchangeable or to judge people by their appearances or to demand more from people than they’re able to give us. The book might have been a feminist exploration of women’s limited life options and what happens when a woman tries to put her needs and desires above those of society.
The key to writing a speculative twist is in deciding which theme you want that twist to explore. And I think The Husbands is about our tendency toward dissatisfaction and our need to find greater appreciation in what we have. I won’t spoil the ending, but I think it illustrates this concept well.
Coming soon…
~~Writers’ Book Club: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
We’re going to do a much more in-depth version of The Book Breakdown with a multi-post look at this speculative mystery novel. We’ll talk about plot structure, character, and genre elements (mystery, science fiction) to see what we can learn as writers. This is one of my favorite all-time novels, so I’m excited to dive in!
The first post will be available to everyone, while subsequent posts will be available only to paid subscribers.
~~The Writer’s Attic Classroom: Let’s learn a new theory about plotting a novel!
Some of you have asked for a writing workshop that you can take right here on The Writer’s Attic (I occasionally teach writing courses on other sites). I’ve been studying a really fascinating theory on plotting, and I’m excited to teach it to you!
This mini-workshop on plotting will be available only to paid subscribers.
5-Page Book Club Posts
If you enjoy The Book Breakdown, you’ll love these posts, in which I go in-depth on the first several pages of a novel. I link to a free sample of each book and then I go over specific quotes to examine writing elements.
I loved this book too! Your analysis of it is great… So many excellent takeaways!
This is fabulous. Now, I want to read it.