Could this be the new ‘Gone Girl’?

‘Chanson Douce’, Leila Slimani’s shocking novel inspired by a child-killing case, will be next year’s must-read, says

Chanson Douce

“I’m getting stuck into two huge taboos: child murder and the place of the mother today, so I expected a reaction.

“Because the mother I write about is a woman who doesn’t want to be stuck at home; she wants to work and sees the nanny as someone who can free her from her role as a mother. And that is something so many women feel but won’t admit. There’s still this idea that women are ‘abandoning’ their children when they go off to work. And yet nobody thinks that of men.”

Anyone reading the book can tell within a few paragraphs that its author is a mother (Slimani has a fiveyear-old son with her banker husband) who has felt first hand the perfect split of agony, ecstasy and mindnumbing boredom that motherhood entails. Everyone is the same; everyone’s nice. When actually that’s not the case,” she says.

With traditional class lines now blurred, Slimani goes on, there is no “code” of etiquette between nannies and parents – and that’s problematic. “People don’t want to treat their nannies subserviently. Nobody knows how to behave and everyone is slightly pretending the mother and nanny are ‘equal’ – when that’s not the case. And pretending you are equal can make things complicated, even dangerous.”

One thing Chanson Douce is not about, is blame.

“Can you believe in the Louise Woodward case [the British nanny convicted of killing an eight-month-old baby in 1997], the defence used the fact that the mother worked, saying: ‘Well, she left her children ...’

“That’s utterly scandalous. A mother should never be blamed for working. Because 90% of women – not just middle-class but working class – are obliged to do so. They have no choice,” she says, breathless now.

Chanson Douce will be published by Faber next year. — The Daily Telegraph