A Perfect Arrangement [Hardcover]

Suzanne Berne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

Handsome and ambitious, Mirella and Howard Cook-Goldman have it all-two precious children, dual careers, a great old colonial house on Massachusetts's North Shore, a golden retriever. The only thing they lack is reliable child care.

Enter Randi Gill, sent by Family Options, Ltd., an agency specializing in Midwestern girls with teaching aspirations ("Could you be Comfortable with Anything but the Best for Your Family?. . . Guaranteed Nationwide FBI Criminal Fingerprinting and Background Checks."). Randi's references are perfect. She's perfect. She cleans, cooks, sews, and makes her own Play-Doh. The children love her . . . almost too much.

Though it's hard for Mirella to watch Randi succeed with the children where she has failed, she can't deny the peace and order Randi has brought to the household. But perfection is a tough act to maintain, and soon enough, there are ruptures. When events force Mirella and Howard to reveal the secrets they've been hiding from each other, the family cataclysm catapults the nanny (who has secrets of her own) into a position of unnatural control.

In A Perfect Arrangement, Suzanne Berne now fixes her sights on contemporary, two-career family life. Overscheduled and overwhelmed, today's parents are desperate for help. Whatever child care they manage to set up, the arrangements are rarely perfect. This suspenseful novel asks a question all of them face: "Is there anyone you can trust with your children?"

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The setup for Suzanne Berne's second novel sounds positively gothic: Mirella (a lawyer) and Howard (an architect) desperately need a nanny to care for their two small children. Without carefully checking her references, they welcome the cozy-seeming Randi into their creaky Colonial saltbox. At first the arrangement does seem perfect: Randi cooks, cleans, and works wonders with the heretofore recalcitrant children. But slowly it becomes clear that her sunny, reliable temperament might be cloaking a darker past. In elegant, sometimes quite funny prose, Berne cleverly readies the reader for domestic atrocities in the gruesome tradition of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Then she subverts our expectations by showing that Mirella and Howard have their secrets, too--quiet compromises they've made to achieve their ideal home. The reader keeps waiting for the nanny horror show to begin, and meanwhile Berne shows a family falling apart under the pressure of trying to appear perfect. "Disaster could be small and dull and corrosive," she writes. "It might already have come."

To up the ante, Berne has installed her domestic ménage in a charming New England town, where main street is populated by quaint shops, and unsightly necessities (such as, say, the grocery store) are relegated to the hinterlands. Inhabiting the equivalent of a Norman Rockwell painting, each character is further pressed to idealize the notion of family; each has a distinctive mental image of what a home should look like. Anger and frustration and failure are suppressed until they surface in horrible, comic eruptions. Thus do Berne's characters ultimately learn to appreciate the "terrible, desirable, exhausting plenitude" of life. Admirers of Joanna Trollope's domestic dramas--by turns witty and harrowing--should find much to love in A Perfect Arrangement. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly

Quotidian details of an apparently perfect domestic life spell suspense in Berne's second novel (after A Crime in the Neighborhood), set in the small New England town of New Aylesbury. Mirella Cook-Goldman works for a Boston law firm; her husband, Howard, is an architect who works at home. Their two young children, five-year-old Pearl and toddler Jacob, mill about their lovely colonial house. But this pleasant surface shows cracks: Pearl is temperamental and Jacob developmentally slow; Mirella and Howard talk past one another he resents her long work hours, and she feels distanced from her family. Both are harboring major secrets. Their new nanny, Randi, is young and energetic she cooks, cleans and devises games for the children. In theory, Mirella and Howard should have more time to spend with each other, but it soon becomes evident that their problems run deeper than lack of intimacy. Things further disintegrate when Mirella and Howard realize that hyperefficient Randi might be too possessive and not quite what she seems. Berne is an assured writer and is at her best with careful, observant descriptions of family life. The novel is less successful at providing an emotional center the characters often seem like studiously drawn archetypes and the jacked-up dramatic scenes toward the end are forced. But a sense of the fragility and also resilience of our everyday existence lingers after the final page. Agent, Colleen Mohyde. (May 25)Forecast: Berne's first novel won the Orange Prize in the U.K., was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times and the Edgar Allan Poe first fiction awards all of which will promote name recognition. Selling to fans of Sue Miller and Alice Hoffman should help build sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1st edition (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565122615
• ISBN-13: 978-1565122611
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,233,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars shockingly banal, January 31, 2002

By 

Adrienne Merlo (Burnaby, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Perfect Arrangement (Hardcover)

Thank God I did not buy this book. Instead, I checked it out of the local library and saved myself the profound disappointment of having purchased a book which proves to be mediocre at best. I cannot believe this author actually teaches at Harvard. "A Perfect Arrangment" is so bland, so pointless, and so preposterous, that I found myself shaking my head in utter bewilderment. I am now convinced that I have enough talent to publish a novel, because if this can be published, anything can.
The plot concerns a selfish couple who hire a nanny to take over the job of parenting. Despite the fact that the nanny cooks, bakes, cleans, and obviously adores the children is seen not as a positive, but rather, something to agonize over; something for which suspicions should be aroused. There is all sorts of suspense which leads to nothing! I was rooting for the nanny which I doubt was the author's intention. The mother/wife in the story is sickening in her utter lack of domestic knowledge. She has a son who displays emotional/mental problems but choses to devote herself to her career instead of trying to help him. Both the husband and wife are lazy, selfish, and deserving nothing short of contempt, but somehow the reader is expected to share their angst! What a pointless waste of time reading this novel was. The real victim here is the nanny who is physically thrown out simply for caring too much for the little boy. Yet the jacket reads, "who can you really trust with your children"? In this case, certainly not the parents.
What a stupid story. What a waste of time reading it.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Perfect Novel, June 25, 2001

By 

"ladylea2020bookends" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Perfect Arrangement (Hardcover)

As a reader of many books, both fiction and,non-fiction, I can say without hesitation that A Perfect Arrangement is the best book I have read in years.There is not a false note in the story that has elements of the banal mixed exquisitely in with a suggestion of catastrophe at every turn. Most every sentence contains either a surprising event, a fascinating observation or a hilarious character . Suzanne Berne has an amazing ability to capture the nuances which can turn our every day activities into harrowing and sometimes hysterical leaps of faith.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Strung out dramatic tension, September 17, 2001

By 

C. Gordon (Belmont, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Perfect Arrangement (Hardcover)

This book builds and builds to its dramatic end and is ultimately disappointing. The foreshadowing is annoying rather than suspense building. The book also includes a lot of tangents and details that detract from the story itself. The more interesting characters (like the in-laws) are often set aside to dwell on the archtypes of the overly-helpful nanny, the distracted and unfaithful husband and the overextended working mother.

The climactic revelation of the nanny's misdeeds is historically short-sighted. The nanny's breech was long considered essential to taking care of children. Two hundred years ago the breech would have been a status symbol, rather than grounds for dismissal.

I thought a good editor might have been able to shape this book into something more cohesive.