Book 72: "The Phantom Husband" by Marie Darrieussecq"

[kittiwake]

What I found really hard was not that I myself had transformed into into a creature from the depths of the deep (one of those translucent beasts, who under bathysphere lamps, appear reddish, soft and slightly disgusting) but that, as I'd had confirmed with my own eyes, when it came to the rest of the clan, the only feeling aroused by my husband's disappearance was embarrassment (the same goes for deep sea molluscs), From now on they'd be giving me a wide berth, steering prudently around me with their flippers, pretending to be listening to the silence of the deep.

The story starts when a man goes out to buy some bread one evening and doesn't come back. His wife is left in a kind of limbo, seeing his phantom in the street and in their flat, and taking refuge in fantasy. I was going to use a quote about ripping a teddy bear open and seeing its entrails to illustrate her fantasising, but changed my mind, as it would put you all off your food!

I thought to start with that it was set in France, with the bread shops open in the evening, and the Metro. But then it turned out that it was a capital city on the coast with a sealion colony, and lots of reference to islands, so it doesn't sound like Europe after all.