The Perfect Nanny

A Best Book of the Year:
The New York Times Book Review
The Boston Globe
Real Simple
Lit Hub
Entertainment Weekly (honorable mention)

Book of the Year, The British Book Awards (Debut Fiction)
Winner of the Prix Goncourt
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller
Finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original

“Mesmerizingly twisted.” —The New York Times Book Review, “The 10 Best Books of 2018”

“This is no mere ripped-from-the-headlines airport paperback: The Perfect Nanny is a tough book about a grim subject, staring down the hard truth of this monstrous incident with clarity and conviction. Its power leaps out from the unforgettable opening sentence: ‘The baby is dead.’ No sentiment, no sensationalism: pure horror.” —The New York Times

“Exquisite . . . In Slimani’s hands, the unthinkable becomes art. The Perfect Nanny won France’s most prestigious literary award. . . . One can see why the judges were wowed.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“I’ve thought about [it] pretty much every day. . . . [It] felt less like an entertainment, or even a work of art, than like a compulsion. I found it extraordinary. . . . If you are a mother, whatever kind of mother you aspire to be, you’ll know what kind of mother you are after reading Slimani. If you are not a mother, the insights that she administers can be no less jolting. . . . Like Jenny Offill, Slimani can write ravishingly of female bodies, even postpartum ones. . . . The novelist Rachel Cusk has chronicled what motherhood did to her; Slimani examines what mothering is doing to society.” —Lauren Collins, The New Yorker

“I loved this book, I hated this book, this book changed me. . . . What The Perfect Nanny does so incredibly well is plumb the essential relationship between parents and nanny—and really, mother and nanny. . . . A chillingly clever horror novel about class and parenting.” —Barrie Hardymon, NPR’s Guide to 2018’s Great Reads

“[A] slim dagger of a novel . . . You won’t move until you reach the last page.” —People

“This book is a dazzling nightmare you don’t want to leave. I gasped at its final chapters, putting it down to breathe. Then I turned back to the start and immediately began rereading.” —Tiffany May, The New York Times Book Review

“Deliciously twisty . . . An exquisitely crafted portrait of creeping madness and child murder . . . Slimani’s exploration of race and class is razor-sharp and brilliantly provides the fuel for a hair-raising tale of domestic horror.” —Entertainment Weekly, “The Ten Best New Thrillers to Read This Spring”

“Remember The Nanny Diaries? Well, this is like if someone brushed the pages of that book with arsenic.” —Harper’s Bazaar, “16 Thriller Books That Will Give You Instant Goosebumps”

“The first ‘hot’ novel of 2018 . . . Unflinching . . . assured . . . The book aspires toward the taut elegance of that classic nanny nightmare tale, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, and, in language and complexity, it comes pretty darn close. . . . Talk about a guilty pleasure.” —The Washington Post

“So twisted and creepy, but absolutely captivating.” —Lauren Christensen, The New York Times Book Review (podcast)

“It’s excruciating, and almost more than anything that I could imagine—and therefore I read on.” —Pamela Paul, The New York Times Book Review (podcast)

“Brilliantly observed . . . Slimani is brilliantly insightful about the peculiar station nannies assume within the households of working families.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Dazzling . . . A portrait etched in shards of glass . . . Slimani is an astute observer of power politics in the home. . . . The hints of France’s greatest short-story writer emerge in the first pages. . . . We begin The Perfect Nanny in horror, and then miraculously, swiftly, Slimani creates a person out of that powerful spectacle. In this fashion the novel functions like an extended Maupassant story turned inside out.” —John Freeman, The Boston Globe

“A taut page-turner about what can happen when no one pays attention to what matters most . . . Illuminates the treatment of domestic workers, the petty ugliness that can be endemic to marriage, and the primal fears that accompany having children.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“I devoured the entire thing in a day or two. I read it . . . horrified and anxious, yet unable to put it down. It’s a gripping read . . . : a little window into a person’s brain as they unravel into the unthinkable.” —Lori Keong, New York

“You won’t be able to put this book down.” —Real Simple

“Shocking, riveting.” —Vulture

“A devastating little book.” —The AV Club

“If you love dark, propulsive thrillers, you’ll be hooked. . . . Like a good horror film, it offered a safe environment in which to explore all my latent fears. . . . A painfully lurid, one-eye-open kind of pleasure.” —Leah McLaren, MSN

“Spare and evocative . . . A book that haunts you long after you’ve put it down.” —The Cut

“[An] unnerving cautionary tale . . . Pretty radical for a domestic thriller, but what’s more remarkable about this unconventional novel is the author’s intimate analysis of the special relationship between a mother and a nanny. . . . Slimani writes devastatingly perceptive character studies.” —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

“Chilling . . . A slim page-turner, The Perfect Nanny can be read in a single, shivery sitting. . . . It will make a great film.” —The Economist

“Gripping . . . Slimani’s slick storytelling turns this bread-and-butter thriller premise into a deeply intelligent excavation of fraught themes like class, sexism, motherhood, and moral goodness. . . . The text is efficient and propulsive . . . featuring sentences that will hold you in suspense until the very last page. . . . You should read this when you’re already strapped into your seat on the plane because if you read this before boarding, you may become so enthralled that you miss your flight to Paris.” —Condé Nast Traveler

“Slimani ratchets up the tension here through close quarters, resentment and complicity. The book . . . is chilling and an important look at the unseen challenges faced by service workers.” —The Washington Post, “A Guide to the Best New Thrillers”

“Grabs us by the throat . . . The story’s tension builds relentlessly. . . . Fans of psychological thrillers will find it a perfect start to their 2018 reading list.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A masterpiece of imagination. Slimani sets up an unanswerable question and answers it: In her hands, the conundrum of who could do such a thing, and why, becomes a surgical interrogation of bourgeois French culture and the tensions of parenthood.” —Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic

“A deft portrait of bourgeois family life in the twenty-first century . . . Readers aren’t likely to converge on a single interpretation of why Louise has done what she’s done. Ultimately, she holds sway as a symbol rather than as a psychological reality, a choice that makes this deftly told tale all the more eerie.” —Amy Weiss-Meyer, The Atlantic

“Like Gone Girl, the novel deserves praise for pulling off a tricky plot with nuance. . . . Slimani’s focus on race and class certainly elevates the book’s crime-drama stakes into something more complicated.” —The New Republic

“Easily one of my favorite books of the year . . . Gravely artful . . . A penetrating, existential thriller that is fiercely complicated about race and class.” —Minna Zallman Proctor, Bookforum

“Staggering . . . I love that The Perfect Nanny brings out the danger lurking beneath an ordinary scenario—parents needing child care! I also love how it taps into a common fear: If we choose our own needs over our children’s, will we inevitably be punished?” —Ashley Audrain, author of the New York Times bestseller The Push, in The Week

“More artfully composed than many of the books in its genre.” —The New York Times

“Terrifying, brilliant . . . A truly chilling story that promises to leave you questioning all your long-held thoughts on motherhood and the different prices paid as women try to achieve something resembling domestic bliss.” —Nylon

“A classic, even Dostoevskian, tale of one person’s descent into madness.” —The Millions

“[A] stunner of an opening . . . Slimani’s characters are well drawn, and she laces her narrative with acute observations, and seems intent to let no one off the hook for the terrible act at the heart of the story. . . . [It] feels scarily real. . . . Her matter-of-fact tone adds a layer of creepiness. . . . Slimani gives us much to think about. . . . She comes across as an artist doomed to find the dark side in everything. . . . But that doom may be her great gift.” —WBUR

“Both haunting and harrowing. . . The stark, austere prose makes Slimani’s novel all the more gripping—and unsettling—from the very first page.” —Electric Literature

“This brutal chiller has the same compulsive readability as Emma Donoghue’s Room.” —The Guardian

“The ‘French Gone Girl’ . . . Anyone reading [it] can tell within a few paragraphs that its author is a mother . . . who has felt firsthand the perfect split of agony, ecstasy and mind-numbing boredom that motherhood entails.” —The Telegraph

“A brilliantly deft depiction of modern notions of motherhood, class and race.” —Vogue (U.K.)

“The novel, which draws on elements from the real story of a nanny from the Dominican Republic who has been accused of killing two children under her care in New York in 2012, pieces together disparate events that culminate in a nightmarish outcome.” —The New York Times

“This novel—a runaway hit in France—is coming to the United States this month, and it’s sure to take this country by storm, too.” —Bustle

“Just as America became engulfed in Gone Girl and Girl on the Train last year, France became obsessed with The Perfect Nanny. . . . As taboo and shocking as the subject matter is, the underlying theme of women exploring their desires is what stands out. . . . A must-read.” —Hello Giggles

“A devastating, entrancing, literary psychological drama supported by absorbing character studies . . . Readers won’t be able to look away.” —Booklist

“Expertly probes [a mother’s] guilt at leaving her children with a stranger . . . Those seeking a thought-provoking character study will appreciate this gripping anatomy of a crime.” —Publishers Weekly

“The why of this horrific crime remains unfathomable, rendering it all the more frightening.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A darkly propulsive nail-biter overlain with a vivid and piercing study of class tensions.” —Library Journal, “Top Ten Titles for Winter Reading”

“If you’ve ever taken care of a kid, even if, just on a bus, someone has handed you a child for five seconds as they rummage through their purse, this will do something to you. . . . At the end of reading this book, I was so devastated, but I really felt like I was looking at the world through new eyes.” —Barrie Hardymon, NPR’s Weekend Edition