Book Review Leila Slimani Lullaby

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2018 Faber & Faber – Translated by Sam Taylor – Spoiler alerts. When a nanny murders two children in her charge, (on page one) the story tells the events leading to the murders in flashback, with occasional references to the police investigation. Myriam is a French-Moroccan lawyer, torn between being a dutiful housewife and her longing to return to work as a lawyer. Her husband Paul is a musician and producer. Their solution is to hire a nanny, the enigmatic Louise, a French lady who seems almost elfin, a keen story teller who knows all the cool games. The children, Mila, aged about four, and Adam, barely walking, adore her. Louise has genuine good references from other parents, she keep the house immaculate, she cooks brilliantly and throw the coolest birthday parties in town, so what went wrong? While many crime novels underscore an identified killer’s past with moments of foreshadowing and acts of extreme behaviour, Louise is kept largely a the perfect nanny until late on in the story. If anything, the parents are criticized more for dependency on her. Their own seemingly perfect wealth (working, having the income to pay for hired help), and demanding standards are seen in a dark light. Later, cracks in Louise’s persona become apparent. Alone, at home, her life is a mess. Her own teenage rebel daughter ran away from home. She is in heavy debts. Her own apartment is untidy and neglected. Her shower cubicle has collapsed slowly without her reporting it to her landlord, who is now threatening her with eviction. The family never visit her at home, though they often talk of doing so some time. They have her come to them, but never reciprocate. Louise wears heavy make-up, giving her a doll’s face look which is initially described as cute but later as grotesque. The hint is that she may be much older than she appears and that her true nature is as buried as her real appearance and age. Louise gets hostile when she is criticized or her own imperfections come to light. Her first act of aggression is when she pushes Mila roughly aside when she is forced to explain that she can’t swim during a beach holiday with the family. Later the Nanny tries giving Mila a make-up job similar to her own which Paul finds offensive. As the children show signs of growing older, taking on more of a rebellious air, Louise loses control. Mila accepts an ice cream from a stranger which angers Louise who starts shaking the girl, but Mila bites her. The message from the girl is clear. You can’t report me to my mum without exposing your own negligence. Louise really begin to flip when she recovers a chicken carcass from the bins trips the bones clean, feeds the whole of its meat to the children, and leaves the gleaming clean-picked skeleton of it on the table. Though shocked, the parents only decide to lay Louise off when they find a replacement while this bunny boiling moment should really warn them of the horrors to come. That is a real Fatal Attraction ‘bunny boiler’ moment of warning that is unconvincingly suppressed. An intriguing novel that hides the motives rather than discovering them. It is a detective story in reverse, as we know the killer, crime and victim, but the motivation is buried amidst meticulous duty and diligence, with only a few warning sparks coming to light. The novel covers its tracks in heavy layers of make-up, just as Louise does. Can we really understand with any killer exactly why they committed the crime? There is much here about the cruel imposition on the Nanny, (any nanny) given access, but not ownership of the children, able to provide time and keeping the children occupied but restricted from how much love they can share and having to suppress their own needs and anxieties. Louise hides her own failure as a mother, her own life as a mess when she has no one to impress or serve, her masked identity, her Peter Pan collars are a sign of her need to hold back the corruption of ageing, but as the children age and lose innocence, she becomes an avenging angel. Her crime is as much a statement on the lives of the parents a on her own condition. The book ultimately seems anti-climactic for not showing any aftermath to the crime. We get only the start of the investigation. It screams for a look at the fate of the family, perhaps its further exposure in the police and court hearings to follow. It feels as if that should be shared too. What is given however is astonishing and scary. Arthur Chappell