FICTION
Lullaby By Leila Slimani, Faber & Faber, £12.99 Review by Natalie Bowen
Working mothers cannot have it all — not without a little help. Parisian couple Myriam and Paul rave to their friends about their nanny Louise — their son and daughter adore her, she cooks their meals and keeps their home spotless.
But one day, Myriam comes home to find both children dead. Slimani’s book opens in the middle, with this tableau — what follows is the unique power dynamics of this professional menage a trois, when love and ambition become twisted, and how an idyllic arrangement can turn complacently, and horrifically, wrong.
Slimani, a Morroccan-French journalist, fills her text with the racism, insecurities, thoughtlessness, questionable morality and hypocrisy of the nanny trade.
And Sam Taylor’s translation communicates a sharp eye for detail that shows the perfect surface of maintained appearances, while hinting at the unconsidered mysteries hidden below.
This short novel — a mere 207 pages — is taut, gripping and slow-burning, yet completely absorbing.