Today, I'm aiming both parts of that question at anyone reading this post. First, The Perfect Nanny (2016) will not bring you closer to me, or anyone else for that matter. Second, if you decide to read this brilliant but disturbing book by Leila Slimani, and you remember that you learned of it via me, there's a chance it could create a distance between us. Caveat emptor.
If you think I'm exaggerating at all, read the first two simple declarative sentences, a startling prelude to an intense first section unlike any I've read in recent memory. (The novel has neither numbered nor named "chapters".) Although the first sentences and the section that follows reveal precisely how this modern-day horror story will end, you will soon learn the gifted author has more on her mind than shocks. For 228 pages, Slimani relentlessly builds on her straightforward, gruesome opening as the perfect nanny "...becomes ever better at being simultaneously invisible and indispensable .. single handedly holding up this fragile edifice". By the time you read the matter-of-fact, horrifying sentences ending the novel, you might find yourself short of breath. I did.
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