This
psychological suspense novel is a whydunit; it opens with a shocking revelation: “The baby is dead. . . . The little girl was
still alive . . . [but] her throat was filled with blood. Her lungs had been punctured, her head
smashed violently . . . [The nanny] didn’t know how to die. She only knew how to give death. She had slashed both her wrists and stabbed
the knife in her throat.” The rest of
the novel is a series of flashbacks showing the nanny’s life with the Massé family in Paris throughout which the reader searches for the motive
behind the tragic events.
Myriam and
Paul hire Louise to look after Mila and Adam when Myriam decides she wants to
return to working as a lawyer after she becomes filled with “bitterness and
regret” at having abandoned her career and feels “as if she were dying because
she had nothing to talk about but the antics of her children.” In Louise, a 40-year-old widow, they think
they have found “a miracle-worker.” She
is adept at looking after the children, entertaining and enchanting them, and
then gradually takes over more and more tasks in the house: “Every day [Myriam] abandons more tasks to a
grateful Louise.” She cooks gourmet
meals for the family and their guests, cleans, and never complains when asked
to stay late. “In a few weeks, Louise’s
presence has become indispensable.” She,
however, also becomes jealous and protective:
“She is Vishnu, the nurturing divinity, jealous and protective; the
she-wolf at whose breast they drink, the infallible source of their family
happiness.” And eventually “she has
embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to
remove her.”
From the
beginning, there are hints that there is more to Louise than is obvious. When Myriam and Paul meet her, they are “charmed”
by her because “she appears imperturbable” but her physical appearance suggests
hidden secrets: “Her face is like a
peaceful sea, its depths suspected by no one.”
Gradually, readers learn about her grim past. She lives in a “vile” one-room apartment and
has only one friend. There are several
references to her loneliness; for example, “Solitude was like a vast hole into
which Louise watched herself sink.” What
she wants more than anything is to become a member of the Massé family: “She has only one
desire: to create a world with them, to
find her place and live there, to dig herself a niche, a burrow, a warm hiding
place.” Of course as time passes, Louise
realizes that eventually the family will cease to need her; her lack of
security causes her to become more and more desperate. In the end, some readers will find sufficient
explanation in Louise’s character for the murders, but others may still feel
that Louise remains an enigma.
The reader
will end up asking who bears responsibility for what happens. Is
Louise entirely to blame? Do Paul and Myriam
exacerbate the situation by sometimes telling her, “’You’re part of the
family’” and at other times, keeping her at a “’good distance.’” Myriam, for example, thinks, “You look at her
and you do not see her. Her presence is
intimate but never familiar.” Only once
does Myriam try “to imagine, in a corporeal sense, everything Louise is when
she is not with them.” Should Myriam and Paul have been less willing
to become dependent on Louise: “It
would be impossible, they think, to manage without her. They react like spoiled children, like
purring cats.” Are the children too much for Louise? The children’s tantrums do exhaust the
parents; “Mila’s tantrums drove [Myriam] mad. . . . Sometimes she wanted to
scream like a lunatic in the street.
They’re eating me alive, she would think.” What
is the role of fate? At one point,
fate is described as “vicious as a reptile.
It always ends up pushing us to the wrong side of the handrail.”
Readers who
enjoy character studies will enjoy this novel.
The third person omniscient narration gives insight into the thoughts
and feelings of all characters, even the children. On the other hand, the book may be too
intense for parents looking for a nanny or au pair for their offspring.
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