"I didn't realise how carnal the book was until I listened to the audio version of it," she says.

"My husband said who's the woman who wrote this, who did I marry?"

It's a question that in part sums up the story of Anna Benz, the heroine of Hausfrau, "a good wife, mostly", an American ex-pat living in Zurich with her Swiss banker husband, a woman whose world is falling apart.

She is disconnected from her husband, ambivalent towards her children, she has no job and finds comfort and solace in the arms of strangers. She threatens everything in her seemingly perfect life for the intense passion of short-lived sexual affairs.

Essbaum says Anna is "just an incredibly broken person".

"She just has this extraordinary sadness about her … whether her loneliness is the fuel or the match that ignites her behaviour, I don't know."

She is a character who has polarised readers, one who is flawed and tragic, but she's a woman Essbaum didn't set out intending to punish.

"While I was working on the book I thought I can't make this a morality tale, I can't have her punished for her actions. But the more I thought through it, the more I thought that's not my choice.

"Any time that we do things there are consequences, and I'm saying that very carefully, I don't mean to imply she deserves what happens to her, there is no pointy finger of God saying you deserve this.

"But the lie would be that everything continues as normal if she's living this way, living against every instinct."

Like Anna, Essbaum lived in Switzerland from mid 2006-2008, while her first husband was studying there; she too dealt with the displacement. (But swears, laughing again, that there were no adulterous affairs, that the book's not autobiographical.)

"I didn't have a purpose, he had a context … I wasn't a subjugated woman, I was happy to be there because we loved each other and supported each other … but the feelings that Anna carries around, they were my feelings.

"I caught myself wandering through a lot of stores, sitting on park benches, crying like a baby because I was so lonesome."

Essbaum, 43, is a born-and-bred Texan, best known for her poetry.

"I've written a lot about the erotic, about living in the body, about carnal obsessions but I also write lot about religion and Christianity, and how these things converge to a point where they fight each other … that same fight probably happens in me as well."

She said the only difference between writing poetry and a full length novel was the amount of time she spent "with my arse in the chair", for, for her, it's all about a love of words.

"I just love words, you hear people say they love stories, or love literature, I just love words."

Essbaum said she recorded every word of Hausfrau as she wrote it, listening back after each draft, to make sure she had the words right.

"I had to make sure it was lyrical."

For Essbaum writing is all about creating art.

"Sometimes poetry becomes a game for me, trying to encapsulate all this feeling into such a small space. I don't say that to undercut the meaningfulness of it, or the seriousness of it, but I find it very pleasing when I've been successful at it.

"Writing has to be about making art, it's not about making a statement, it certainly can't be about selling books, if you're writing poetry it can't even be about getting published.

"When you publish something you should fall on your knees and thank God because that's a gift."

Hausfrau, by Jill Alexander Essbaum. Mantle. $29.99.