Nanny Nanny

‘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

A single, 35-year-old career nanny decides to have a baby of her own in this rare and funny novel, that upends every expectation of a book about motherhood.

After years of caring full-time for the children of the rich and the famous, our narrator has been struck, finally, with baby fever. Over a drink with sympathetic friends, she lists all the reasons why she wants to have a baby, beginning with the story of an intoxicating, abusive relationship to an ex-wife 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.

Opening up the possibilities of her future, she looks too at the past. At the seemingly idyllic childhood she spent under her father’s roof; the mentorship, and judgment, of the women whose children she has reared; and the man, her first love, who now seems to be offering her a second chance.