The Good Nanny: A Novel [Hardcover]

Benjamin Cheever (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2, 2004

A searing black comedy about nannies and parents, publishing and prejudice, and the not-so-gentle art of ambition.

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The perfect nanny exposes the shortcomings of her not-so-perfect employers in this scathing satire by Cheever, author of the memoir Selling Ben Cheever and three previous novels (Famous After Death, etc.). Like a literary Nanny Diaries told from the perspective of the beleaguered parents, Cheever's tart tale skewers its protagonists' ambition, materialism, literary pretensions and sheltered lives. Stuart Cross and Andie Wilde, a sophisticated pair with interesting careers in Manhattan—Stuart is an editor at a prestigious small publishing house, and Andie has just been promoted to the "enviable but not entirely respectable position" of top film critic for the New York Post—have recently bought a huge house in the suburbs and hired a nanny, the estimable Louise Washington. Louise, who is "Miss Washington" to her employers but "Sugar" to nine-year-old Ginny and six-year-old Jane, is the ideal nanny (she reads Hilaire Belloc to her charges), but also frighteningly accomplished (she's an excellent painter) and threateningly black (her best friend is a nice guy who just happens to have spent some time in prison). Andie, feeling displaced, becomes more and more paranoid about the nanny's activities, while Stuart suffers a professional blow and is galled to learn that the Museum of Modern Art is interested in the nanny's paintings. Cheever is a remorseless observer ("Stuart turned to his girls. Ginny, his eldest daughter, the fat one, had a large stain on the front of her white blouse") and generally accurate social chronicler (though it seems unlikely that the refined Stuart would buy a house in a development called Heavenly Mansions). As this satisfying if sometimes stiflingly mannered morality tale builds to its startlingly violent conclusion, it becomes more than clear that it isn't the nanny Stuart and Andie should fear—it's their own selfish expectations.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Cheever, the author of three previous novels (including Famous after Death, 1999) and several works of nonfiction (Selling Ben Cheever, 2001, among others), has written what is obviously intended to be a black comedy, but, despite the characters encountering situations that border on the absurd, it seems more awkward and uncomfortable than funny. The main characters are Stuart Cross, a successful editor, and his wife, Andie, a successful movie critic. They are both oblivious to the world around them and move through it with entitlement, eventually wreaking havoc on the lives of their young daughters and their new nanny. They provide their two young daughters with the kind of benevolent neglect that the fictional rich often do. When they are fortunate enough to engage the services of Louise, a talented artist as well as a devoted caregiver, their unwarranted suspicions of the woman, who is black, set in motion a series of events that gives the book its surprisingly tragic ending. Cheever's name-recognition (son of famous fiction writer John Cheever) will be the primary calling card here. Patrick Wall
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (July 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582341222
• ISBN-13: 978-1582341224
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,519,040 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Readable but here is what the book is REALLY about, June 25, 2006

By 

K. Corn "reviewer" (midwest, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Good Nanny: A Novel (Paperback)

Look at the cover of this one and you may can't really get a sense of the focus, the gist of this book. Is it a horror tale about yet another nanny gone bad? Is it about a nanny who steals the children's hearts, leaving the working parents in second place in their children's hearts?

Well, no, it isn't really about any of those things,although they might be minor points in this book. To me, this book was mainly a morality tale about ambition and where it can lead people and how their lives can get terribly muddled by trying to balance so many things -family life, work, hiring a nanny, wondering if the nanny is a criminal, etc.

I'm not sure why this book hasn't gained more of a readership but it deserves to be read- and discussed. The parents struggle with guilt as they leave their children in charge of the nanny,even though the nanny seems to be about as perfect as a caretaker could be. As the parents become more suspicious, readers can't help but wonder about the nanny as well- and that makes for suspense and tension.

The ending is a bit too pat and unbelievable for my taste but that doesn't offset the strengths of this work. Where is suspicion warranted and when is it merely a projection of guilt and ambivalence? How do high earners cope with loss and change? All of these themes are covered in this small, but not insignificant, book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Should have been better..., October 17, 2004

By 

S. E. Poris (Monroe Twp., NJ, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Good Nanny: A Novel (Hardcover)

Occasionally amusing descriptions of confused upper middle class suburbanites and their conflicted attitudes toward careers and parenting can't salvage this novel. The dialogue (especially that of the children) was awfully stilted, the plot was extremely slight, and the ending was completely predictable. Worst of all, the dust jacket summary gave away (before I even started to read) a very pivotal plot element that wasn't revealed until page 176 of a 270 page book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good read, July 18, 2004

By 

"reader70" (Westchester, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Good Nanny: A Novel (Hardcover)

I did enjoy this Westchester-based book. It was funny, irreverant, and a fast, summer read. While the husband and wife were fairly believable, some of their actions (like buying a toy gun for their daughter) were a bit of a stretch. It was fast paced and interesting and the details were spot on. What amazed me was the number of typos even by page 20. Where were the editors?