Name: Cindy's review of The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani
Item: The Perfect Nanny
Rating: 4
Author: Cindy

Leila Slimani

*One of the 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR of The New York Times Book Review* *National Bestseller* “A great novel . . . Incredibly engaging and disturbing . . . You read the entire novel knowing something terrible is coming. In that, Slimani has us in her thrall.” —Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger “A book . . . that I’ve thought about pretty much every day . . . [It] felt less like an entertainment, or even a work of art, than like a compulsion. I found it extraordinary.” —Lauren Collins, The New Yorker “One of the most important books of the year. You can’t unread it.” —Barrie Hardymon, NPR’s Weekend Edition She has the keys to their apartment. She knows everything. She has embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to remove her. When Myriam decides to return to work as a lawyer after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their son and daughter. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family’s chic Paris apartment, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a compulsive, riveting, bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, motherhood, and madness—and the American debut of an immensely talented writer. The #1 international bestseller and winner of France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt, by the author of Adèle and Sex and Lies

A Novel

The Perfect Nanny

Cindy

Leïla Slimani

"When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family's chic apartment in Paris's upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a compulsive, riveting, bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, and motherhood--and the American debut of an immensely talented writer"--

a novel

The perfect nanny

Andrew John Kinney

DNF is not common for me, but this was just too depressing.

"When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family's chic apartment in Paris's upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau" --

Quick read. Underwhelming for what I expected to be a psychological thriller. 

Zoey Novak

Amy Thibodeau

Dark. Esssentially an exercise to see if the writer can make us empathize with someone who does something unimaginably horrific. She doesn’t completely succeed but close enough.

Amani Zaha

This story starts at the end, with the murder of two children by the hands of their nanny.

We then rewind to follow the life of French-Moroccan lawyer and mother Myriam and her family as they search for, and find, the perfect nanny for their children: Louise. She is caring, polite, meticulous in her house work — quite a dream. So how does she end up a killer?

I read the book and I still don't know. At the end we've come full circle, but the murder that the entire journey culminates in remains a vague mystery. This could be a deliberate choice on the author's part, but it makes for an overall dissatisfactory story. I couldn't sense any tension or suspense — at best, I felt mildly concerned for the characters.

The Perfect Nanny falls short of being a psychological thriller, but isn't a compelling character study either. Louise's background is sketched out, but ultimately I finished the book seeing her merely as a struggling nanny, with little depth of character to lend any more substance to the ending.

Does the fault lie with the translation? Is this a case of right-book-wrong-time? Because I'm having difficulty understanding what to grab onto in this story. Like, Where's The Meat.

So, underwhelming story albeit with pleasant prose, for which it gets two stars instead of one.

Maggie Gordon

Damn, did that go by fast! The Perfect Nanny is a thriller with precision control over suspense. Sure, it tells you exactly where the story is heading in the first chapter, but readers then have to contend with the continuing dread as they head towards what they know is a horrifying, but foregone conclusion. It's a book that says some really smart things about privilege, but without the didactic approach so many novels seem to take. The prose is definitely French, and the translation might feel clunky to some. However, the cadence retains the stylistic features of the original language, and I thought it worked quite well. Not sure why this one has such a low rating on Goodreads. It's a compelling and absorbing read!

Audrey

Jenna

3.5 stars. I was surprised to see The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani on the @nytimes @nytbooks list of the 10 best books of the year as one of the five fiction picks. I had thought it was a typical commercial thriller, from the title and cover and poor marketing choices mentioning Gone Girl. It’s really not, though, and I might consider it more of a literary mystery? But not really even a mystery because you know what has happened... I’m not sure how to categorize it, but it’s really not a thriller.

The first sentence of this book is “The baby is dead.” The nanny killed the baby and the young daughter, and the mother is devastated. The rest of the book paints a picture of how the nanny got to this place of absolute desperation and delusion. It’s full of a slow-building tension and prudent descriptions of the struggles of the mother, who wants to go back to work and struggles with the guilt of leaving her children. That is, until the family lucks into the seemingly perfect nanny.

And the nanny, Louise, really is perfect at first, until her struggles with money and her past overwhelm her to a breaking point. The signs are disturbing - a game of hide and seek where the nanny doesn’t come out until the children are distraught, a chicken carcass left for the mother to find. Maybe the parents should have seen it coming.

I thought this book was really well written. It was disquieting and tense throughout, with some unanswered questions that makes the ending unsettling. The author manages to say a lot about class issues, motherhood, and descent into madness in this quiet and somewhat slow build to an unthinkable act. I really enjoyed this book and I’m so pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t what I was expecting. However, I’m not sure much about it will stick with me for the long haul, besides the shocking story.

Anna Campbell

** spoiler alert **
           I was disappointed in not getting any closure.

Samantha Kalany Hughes

I feel like the overall tone and direction of the novel confused me a bit, but it was a good thriller nonetheless.

Mikayla

Upon reading I thought this seemed really interesting and that I was going to be intrigued the whole time but that just wasn’t the case here. 

The writing style was really confusing to follow. Maybe I just don’t like this writing style or maybe it’s better in French? However, I just wasn’t a fan of the writing style but perhaps maybe you will be.

Wasn’t a terrible book nor was it amazing. It was just a decent read.

Jen Estrella

Actual rating: 3 1/2 stars [I'll think about this some more]

I have mixed feelings about this one. Granted, I devoured it faster than other novels; however, I just have this weird feeling that I'm missing something. 

What I liked about this book:
- The eerie atmosphere from start to finish
- The writing style - it's so beautiful and frightening at the same time. How is that possible? 
- The cultural references - I've always wanted to go to Paris after having gone to Quebec just recently (people say the atmosphere is quite similar). 
- Great character portrait! 

What I didn't like: I have so many questions, but I don't think that's a huge flaw. Still, it would be great to discuss this story with someone. :)

Tiffany Robinson

I was really looking forward to reading this book since it sounded great. I started to read it and the first chapter really sucks you in but that doesn't last long. It gets dull really quick.

Olivera Mitić

Out of all of the books I've read, this was certainly one of them.

yerin

Casie Blevins

Well, that was a boring waste of my time.

Andrada D

The descent into madness of a seemingly normal individual- this is what this book is about.

I saw some people here and there unhappy about the ending but honestly, I preferred it like this, being allowed to imagine what happened there. The author plants several hints here and there that one can pick (or ignore them as red herrings) and reassemble the story, find out  why  she did it. I think it was poverty, solitude, sickness, the triad of evil creeping under one's skin and driving people insane.

I find it quite beautiful the way the beginning and the ending mirror each other, as if both Myriam and Louise are at their breaking point. But Myriam has the money, the support, the job opportunity who help her recover. Louise has the opposite, a multitude of issues pressing her until she just snaps.

I also loved reading the book as a commentary on the nature of relationships of power between different races as well as those between employer and employee. There's something deeply disconcerting in the way the Masses are looking for "a perfect nanny" and have a fixed racial profile. The fact that Louise is white and quite pristine make her ideal and allow the couple to ignore many significant red flags. But also the opposition between their complete reliance on the nanny and their deplorable treatment towards her is disturbing, the way they treat her as a second class human being and devoid of any feelings of her own, ready to use and dismiss whenever they saw it fit. These dynamics, this imbalance of power lead to an obviously tragic ending but one is left to retrace the path and wonder what small changes could have diverted it.

The book is so creepy and engaging, I read more than one hundred pages without blinking at all, which left me with terribly sore eyes. I finished it having more questions than I had starting to read it. In the end, one is left with the unsettling conclusion that tragedy could always strike and we could never fully protect the ones we love.

Cindy &
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani

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