When Myriam, a mother and brilliant French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work, she and her husband are forced to look for a caretaker for their two young children. They are thrilled to find Louise: the perfect nanny right from the start. Louise sings to the children, cleans the family's beautiful apartment in Paris's upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late whenever asked, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on each other, jealousy, resentment, and frustrations mount, shattering the idyllic tableau.
*** [The baby is dead] ***(Faber & Faber, 26 July 2018, first published 18 August 2016, paperback, 224 pages, borrowed from my library)
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Lullaby is one of the most intense, unsettling and disturbing books I've read in ages. So much is packed into such a short piece of writing. The book held my attention from the dramatic and rather bloody opening, filling my head with questions that absolutely had to be answered. Louise is a fantastic character. It would be easy to dismiss her as a monster but the author makes her so real, flawed and human it's gut-wrenching. She's so real it's unsettling, in her forties but she looks much younger, almost childlike. The short chapters make an intense read. I really felt for Louise as she starts to unravel and her carefully constructed, perfect world gradually crumbles.