This had been on my tbr for a while: I remember it making quite a splash when it first came out. And part of the reading experience was finally seeing what it was all about!
It’s essentially a very dark domestic thriller. The story places you inside the mind of a nanny working for a Parisian family with two young children. Through her perspective, you get a really fascinating and unsettling view of motherhood and of the woman she works for, which I found particularly compelling. There’s a love-hate thing going on between them that feels honest.
The novel opens with a shocking act of violence involving the two young children, which is revealed right at the beginning. From there, the narrative works backwards, slowly building a picture of how things reached that catastrophic point.
What stood out to me was how nuanced the book felt, despite its incredibly dark subject matter. Slimani handles the psychological disintegration of the nanny in a way that feels intelligent and disturbingly believable. You also get an insight into an often overlooked world of domestic labour, with moments of conflict, silence, solidarity, joy, and bitterness all mixed in.
My favourite parts were not the horror or psychological aspects, but the witty social dialogue and the theatre of the bourgeois family dynamics awkwardly intersecting with the nanny. Those dynamics are sharply drawn and deeply felt.
The exterior sketches of the neurotic nanny are also great as they help flesh out her character and they up the sinister stakes.
Read if you want a twisted yet compelling domestic horror story.
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