The Perfect Nanny
By Leila Slimani, translated from the French by Sam Taylor. (Penguin Books, 234 pages, $16)
Myriam and Paul are an up-and-coming couple in a classy Paris neighborhood with two lively children, baby Adam and precocious toddler sister Mila. Myriam, who attended law school before getting pregnant, is going stir-crazy at home and jumps at the chance to go back to work. The couple set out to find a nanny to watch the kids. Their interviews are unsatisfying until they meet Louise, a bird-like woman who instantly soothes the fussy baby and pulls Mila out of a funk as the astonished parents look on.
Louise quickly becomes an indispensable part of the household. Playful and adept with the children, she also cooks luscious meals for the couple and their friends, keeps the apartment spotless, throws elaborate children's parties and stays late without a word of complaint. She even accompanies the family on a summer vacation to Greece. The couple brag that they have found the perfect nanny.
But all is not well with Louise. When she's not at her employers' house, she obsesses over every detail in her lonely little flat. We soon learn about her troubled past and watch nervously as she gets overly possessive of the children and the couple. Our nervousness turns to dread as her designs on the family become more intimate and sinister.
Reminiscent of "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle," the story's tension builds relentlessly even though the author has telegraphed the morbid ending at the beginning of the book. Louise's descent into mental illness, even madness, grabs us by the throat.
The 2016 winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt award in France, this unsettling tale has been translated into English by Sam Taylor, for an eager North American audience. Fans of psychological thrillers will find it a perfect start to their 2018 reading list.
GINNY GREENE
The Living Infinite
By Chantel Acevedo. (Europa Editions, 312 pages, $17.)
Historical fiction provides a special kind of escape — we're taken somewhere we can't possibly have ever been — and this enchantingly scented breeze of a novel, beginning with the birth of a princess in 19th-century Spain, held me rapt from its opening page. The book was inspired by the real life of the Infanta Eulalia, a woman of Princess Diana-like popularity in her time and a writer who traveled the world.
Beginning inside the vast Palacio Real de Madrid (it was "like being inside the rib cage of a tremendous, beautiful beast — there were angles, curves, organic colors everywhere"), Acevedo introduces us not only to the rebellious princess, but to others in her midst: a wet nurse plucked from poverty; her Jules Verne-loving "milk brother"; her imperious siblings.
We're taken on a Verne-worthy journey from the old world to the new: from Spain to Cuba to 1893 Chicago — for the World's Fair, and for the giddiness of finding a city in its youth, written in prose that celebrates the joy of discovery. "The White City," Acevedo writes of Chicago, "was a young woman in a wedding gown. It was an undiscovered country. A calliope being played for the first time, crisp and raucous."
Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times
