‘The Perfect Nanny’ by Leila Slimani   (2016) – 228 pages                                                    Translated from the French by Sam Taylor

I would not read a bestselling thriller just because it is popular.  I have never read ‘Gone Girl’.  The only reason I have now read ‘The Perfect Nanny’ by Leila Slimani (titled ‘Lullaby’ in England and other English-speaking countries) is because it won the 2016 Goncourt Prize which to me is usually a mark of French literary distinction.  I have read several Goncourt Prize winners in recent years.

The young French couple Paul and Myriam are looking for a nanny for their two little children, Mila and Adam, so that Myriam can go back to her job as a lawyer. Their main requirement for a nanny is she not be an illegal immigrant.  The French woman Louise shows up, they hire her, and she turns out to be the perfect nanny in every respect.  The kids like her, and she has them doing all kinds of interesting things.  The parents even decide to take her along on their vacations.

And of course the situation is way too good to be true. ‘The Perfect Nanny’ is a nightmarish psychological thriller.

Looking at ‘The Perfect Nanny’ from a literary angle, I must say that I was not impressed with the novel. The prose here is efficient and workmanlike as we’ve come to expect for thrillers, and it is not at all individual or idiosyncratic as one might expect for a Goncourt Prize winner.  For a Goncourt Prize winner, ‘The Perfect Nanny’ is rather a drag at the sentence level.  There is not much going on in the individual sentences.

I also did not find the transformation of the nanny Louise from “prim politeness” to something entirely different at all convincing.  It seems to me that in a psychological thriller there should be hints from the very beginning that something is not right.  However in ‘The Perfect Nanny’ we read the entire first half of the novel, and Louise is still perfect in every way.

I probably will not be reading any further novels by Leila Slimani.  There is one French woman novelist who has not won the Goncourt Prize so far, yet I find her work of such a high quality that I can’t figure out why she hasn’t been awarded the prize yet.  I have read three novels by Delphine de Vigan: ‘Underground Time’, ‘Nothing Holds Back the Night’ and ‘Based on a True Story’. Any of these three but especially ‘Underground Time’ would have been a fine winner.  They have the literary fineness appropriate for the Goncourt.  Delphine de Vigan is the real thing.

Grade :   B-