K Chiucarello

Nanny Nanny is absolutely stunning. Exquisitely crafted, with visceral intensity throughout. I loved it.

In the midst of so many literary reconsiderations of motherhood, this book announces itself as an essential left-field addition to the contemporary canon — a story of a career nanny, a professional mother substitute, yearning for a child as a way to undo and reconfigure the physical and emotional violence of an ex-girlfriend; unraveling, too, the way her self-formation as a mother-in-absence, a body to be depleted and taken for granted, dovetailed with her experience of domestic abuse. K Chiucarello is a thrilling, forthright, sensual, deeply perceptive writer; NANNY NANNY comes at you like an incendiary secret, a sweet and dangerous flame kindled in the dark.

Jia Tolentino, New York Times bestselling author of Trick Mirror

This book is astounding. At once brutal and loving, fast-paced and strikingly attentive, Nanny Nanny is for anyone who has felt the break of one life and started again... K Chiucarello has given us a wholly original motherhood novel, expansive and bold, and inclusive of the many beloved caregivers of children. With intelligence, patience, and forgiveness, we are whipped through the times and places, the generations and lovers, the mistakes and the narrow escapes that build a mother. Nanny Nanny offers an urgent new window on beginnings, one that I can never forget.

Eliana Ramage, author of To the Moon and Back

A deftly crafted, blazing page turner about honest, hard work, and the many occupational hazards of affection. An unforgettable voice.

What a surprising, perceptive novel Nanny Nanny is, stitching together violence and care at every turn, and always insisting on tenderness.

Aysegül Savas, author of The Anthropologists

Fresh, funny, spiky, but also with lots of grit and bite in behind the humour.

Tanya Sweeney, author of Esther is Now Following You

Surprisingly funny, tremendously thoughtful, this is a debut to watch out for.

 LitHub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026

[A] clear-eyed debut. It’s a sharp-edged look at how trauma shapes but doesn’t define a life.

‘In the midst of so many literary reconsiderations of motherhood, this book announces itself as an essential left-field addition to the contemporary canon . . . NANNY NANNY comes at you like an incendiary secret, a sweet and dangerous flame kindled in the dark.’ Jia Tolentino, New York Times bestselling author of Trick Mirror 
 
OUR NARRATOR – a career nanny to the children of the rich and famous – is waiting for a call from her first love. Years ago, she made a pact with her ex that if they were both still single at thirty-five, then they would marry and have a baby. 
 
Over a drink with sympathetic friends, waiting for the call, she lays out her rationale for why this is the most logical next step in her life. But each of her reasons opens a door to the past – to the seemingly idyllic childhood she spent under her father’s roof, to the years she spent moving in and out of her first love’s orbit, to the mentorship and judgement of the women whose children she has cared for as if they were her own, and, ultimately, to the abusive relationship with another woman that she barely survived. She ponders how to fill the gaping void left in the wake of such horrific domestic violence. What’s the next most violent thing a woman can do to herself? she asks. Have a baby.

K Chiucarello

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