Claire--a composer and a new mother, comes to L.A. so her husband can follow his dream of writing TV comedy. Suddenly, the marriage changes, with Paul working all hours and Claire left with a baby, William, whom she adores but has no idea how to care for.
Lola-- a fifty-two-year-old mother of five who comes to work in America to pay for her own children’s higher education back in the Philippines. Lola stabilizes the rocky household, and soon other parents try to lure her away. What she sacrifices to stay with Claire and William remains her own closely guarded secret.
In a novel, at turns satirical and heartbreaking, where mothers’ modern ideas are given practical overhauls by nannies, we meet Lola’s vast network of fellow caregivers, each with her own story to tell. We see the upstairs competition for the best nanny and the downstairs competition for the best deal, and are forced to ask whether it’s possible to buy love for our children and what that transaction costs. We see the endangerment of a modern marriage despite the best of intentions. This tender, witty, and resonant novel provides the profound pleasures readers have come to expect from Mona Simpson, here writing at the height of her powers.
other nanny books:
Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah and their four children. Lewis and Mariah are a thrice-blessed couple--handsome, rich, and seemingly happy. Yet, alomst at once, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful facade. With mingled anger and compassion, Lucy scrutinizes the assumptions and verities of her employers' world and compares them with the vivid realities of her native place. Lucy has no illusions about her own past, but neither is she prepared to be deceived about where she presently is.
The Nanny Diaries by Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin
Struggling to graduate from NYU and afford her microscopic studio apartment, Nanny takes a position caring for the only son of the wealthy X family. She rapidly learns the insane amount of juggling involved to ensure that a Park Avenue wife who doesn't work, cook, clean, or raise her own child has a smooth day.When the Xs marriage begins to disintegrate, Nanny ends up involved way beyond the bounds of human decency or good taste. Her tenure with the X family becomes a nearly impossible mission to maintain the mental health of their four-year-old, her own integrity and, most importantly, her sense of humor. Over nine tense months Mrs. X and Nanny perform the age-old dance of decorum and power as they test the limits of modern-day servitude.
The Good Nanny by Benjamin Cheever
The new nanny is perfect. A natural with children, a whiz in the kitchen, and a talented painter, the only thing Miss Washington can't seem to do is make a mistake. But when Stuart Cross loses his editing job and decides to write the great American novel, the nanny's excellence quickly becomes a sore spot.
Stuart, paralyzed by writer's block, envies her impending artistic success; his wife Andie doesn't trust her and wishes she could stay home with their daughters; and on top of that, even a mention of the nanny's old boyfriend, ex-con Toussaint, makes the local police uneasy. The heightening jealousy and resentment that the parents feel toward their surrogate sets into motion a chain of unexpected events and surprising reversals that will end, less than a week later, in a suspected kidnapping, a half-million-dollar book deal, and the unpleasant question of just who, exactly, the guilty party is.
The Manny by Holly Peterson
A solid middle-class girl from Middle America, Jamie Whitfield isnt “one of them” but she lives in “the Grid,” the wealthiest acre of real estate in Manhattan, where big money and big media collide. And she has most everything they have–a big new apartment, full-time help with her three children, as well as her very own detached Master of the Universe attorney husband. What she doesnt have, however, is a full-time father figure for their struggling nine-year-old son, Dylan. But the rich havent yet encountered a problem they cant hire someone else to solve.
Enter the manny…. At first the idea of paying a man to provide a role model for Dylan sounds too crazy to be true. But one look at Peter Bailey is enough to convince Jamie that the idea may not be quite so insane after all. Peter is calm, cool, competent, and so charmingly down-to-earth, hes irresistible. And with the political sex scandal of the decade propelling her career as a news producer into overdrive, and her increasingly erratic husband locked in his study with suspicious files, Jamie is in serious need of some grounding.
Peter reminds her of everything she once was, still misses, and underneath all the high-society glitz, still is. But will the new manny in her life put the ground back beneath her feet, or sweep her off them?
Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky (on order)
Bad Marieis the story of Marie, tall, voluptuous, beautiful, thirty years old, and fresh from six years in prison for being an accessory to murder and armed robbery. The only job Marie can get on the outside is as a nanny for her childhood friend Ellen Kendall, an upwardly mobile Manhattan executive whose mother employed Marie's mother as a housekeeper. After Marie moves in with Ellen, Ellen's angelic baby Caitlin, and Ellen's husband, a very attractive French novelist named Benoit Doniel, things get complicated, and almost before she knows what she's doing, Marie has absconded to Paris with both Caitlin and Benoit Doniel. On the run and out of her depth, Marie will travel to distant shores and experience the highs and lows of foreign culture, lawless living, and motherhood as she figures out how to be an adult; how deeply she can love; and what it truly means to be "bad".
Substitute Me by Lori Thorsen (on order)
Zora seems perfect. She's an enthusiastic caretaker, a competent house keeper, a great cook. And she wants the job, despite the fact that she won't let her African American parents and brother know anything about this new career move. They expect much more from her than to use all that good education to do what so many Blacks have dreamed of not doing: working for White folks. Working as an au pair in Paris, France no less, was one thing, they could accept that. Being a servant to a couple not much older nor more educated, is yet another. Every adult character involved in this tangled web is hiding something: the husband is hiding his desire to turn a passion for comic books into a business from his wife, the wife is hiding her professional ambitions from her husband, the nanny is hiding her job from her family and maybe her motivations for staying on her job from herself.
list from entertainment weekly 8.6.10
