Chanson douce (French Edition)

J’aime le livre ; c’est bien planifié et bien écrit. Je e suis pas süre que l’intrigue explique pourquoi une baby-sitter parfaite décide d’assasiner les deux enfants.

Birdlike, blonde Louise, hardly bigger than a girl herself, is a magician with children. At her interview with the busy Massé parents in their Paris apartment, she gently takes the squalling baby Adam from his father's arms, calming him instantly, and entices the toddler Mila out of hiding by pretending that she is a princess who has disappeared. Myriam, the children's mother, returns from her first day back at work as an advocate to find that Louise has totally tidied the cramped apartment, seemingly doubling it in size. When the nanny also shows her abilities as a cook, the father, Paul, who manages and records popular musicians, proudly invites friends and colleagues to enjoy the dinners prepared by their perfect nanny. Within weeks, Louise has become one of the family.It seems a miracle. But Leïla Slimani opens her book with the shocking words: "Le bébé est mort." The baby dead, the girl fatally wounded, the apartment bathroom a scene of carnage, the father away on business, the mother in shock. At first, it seems like a crime novel, working backwards to enable us to solve, or at least to understand, the murders. Yet Slimani is more subtle than that. Over the three or four years when Louise is working for the Massés—with occasional flashbacks to her previous employments, her life with her late husband, and troubles with her own daughter—the author paints a complex but instantly recognizable picture of contemporary social life. Unlike a mystery novel, there are few dark secrets waiting to be discovered, simply a developing subtext of class and privilege. Louise is no murderess in waiting, but a rather sad woman who neglects her own life to live vicariously through the perfect care of her charges. The Massés are struggling young professionals, living in the smallest apartment in their building. When they share their lives with Louise, even taking her on holiday to the Greek Islands, their affection is genuine.Leïla Slimani was born in Morocco in 1981, and came to France at the age of 17. CHANSON DOUCE, her second novel, won her the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2016; it became an instant best-seller in France and awaits translation here. Race indeed plays a role in the subtext of class in the book, but it is a measure of the author's subtlety that she treats it only indirectly. It is Myriam, the rising lawyer, who is the Arabic-speaking immigrant; if there is any racism in the book, it is in her reluctance to hire a North African nanny who would seek a false sisterhood with her on grounds of language. But Louise is white. Her friend Wafa, indeed, is an undocumented immigrant, but she plays a minor role in the plot. Slimani's message is that life can deal a rotten hand to anyone; there is no need to look only to obvious factors to explain it.Myriam, defending an accused murderer in the course of her work, tells him: "We have to prove that you, you also are a victim." The case has nothing to do with the main plot, but everything to do with Slimani's theme. For when she is done, that is precisely how we see Louise: as a victim—not of others, but of life itself.

I I liked this book very much. It had me hoping right until the end for a different outcome even though what happened was inevitable. I liked the fleshing out of the basically simple story with endless colorful and vividly described episodes. I will definitely read this author again.

THE PERFECT NANNY by Leila SlimaniLeila Slimani’s Prix Goncourt-​winning novel delves into the tor­mented mind of Louise, the ulti­mate nanny, who dou­bles as house­keeper, gourmet chef, and orga­nizer of chil­drens’ par­ties and out­ings, with­out extra pay. She’s also a work­ing parent’s worse night­mare: a woman whose doll-​like, Mary Pop­pins exte­rior con­ceals a dam­aged psy­che rife with resent­ment, obses­sion, and rage.THE PER­FECT NANNY chron­i­cles the rela­tion­ship between Paul and Myr­iam, two ambi­tious pro­fes­sion­als in Paris’s tony 10th arrondisse­ment, and Louise, the nanny too good to be true who does the unthinkable.“She’s our employee, not our friend,” Paul reminds his wife, but because Louise has become so invalu­able, it’s a point they both keep con­ve­niently overlooking.There’s no mys­tery here as far as the crime. On the first page, we’re told, “The baby is dead.” The ques­tion, of course, is not who mur­dered baby Adam and his older sis­ter Mila, but what demons drove Louise to kill them. To that end, Sli­mani takes us into her stark and lonely world, the sparse apart­ment where she spends as lit­tle time as pos­si­ble, the abu­sive hus­band who left her with crush­ing debts, the land­lord who hounds her for money.Her days spent in her employ­ers’ chic apart­ment mean free­dom to Louise, and she makes the most of them. With the older child at school and the par­ents work­ing, she lux­u­ri­ates in a long, hot shower, then glides nude around the apart­ment, her skin pearles­cent with Miryam’s expen­sive creams.Only occa­sion­ally does the unseemly sur­face, as when Paul comes home to find Louise has tarted up his daugh­ter in full glam­our make-​up. Dis­gusted, he pulls away from Louise after that, but by then the unequal rela­tion­ship has pro­gressed too far, mak­ing Louise almost impos­si­ble to dis­lodge. While Louise obsesses over whether Myr­iam is preg­nant again, the par­ents pon­der ways to grace­fully let her go. It’s that ter­ri­ble dis­par­ity – the nanny’s fan­tasies of being part of a fam­ily when she is, in fact, hired help – that brings the novel back full cir­cle to its dev­as­tat­ing open­ing lines.Although the end­ing dis­ap­points, leav­ing the reader to the obser­va­tions of the police detec­tive going over the scene, as a whole I found the novel engross­ing on many lev­els – as a crime thriller and as a social com­men­tary on class dis­tinc­tion, eco­nomic dis­par­ity, and motherhood.

Don’t know why this novel was awarded the Prix Goncourt. The author starts with a bang by reporting the murder of two kids by their maid but then strays further and further away from this slim but promising premise as though trying to fill up pages but not knowing where to go. It becomes a boring read after a while and doesn’t keep up with its premise. It is neither a crime novel nor a novel about a family trying to cope with this enormous tragedy. The author’s use of the French language is simple but masterful enough, however the story she tells (if a story at all) is not worth a read and in the end is boring. I gave up reading halfway through.

I started this before going on a trip and planned to read it on my Kindle. After reading a bit, I decided to read something else, something that wouldn't keep me awake at night. But - I read it after getting home. This is a great read. Not really a horror novel, although some horrible things happen. It's very well organized, well-written, insightful.

depicting a slow psychological decline. The added value is the intelligent analysis of class distinctions and of parental mores. Dependence and exploitation become mingled. The writing is fine but nothing extraordinary, and with the exception of Louise, I won't remember the characters all that well.

I am a real lover of French books and tend to go for the ones that have won awards and always read lots of reviews before purchasing. This book really surprised me. It didn't have too many reviews on the French Amazon website however I decided to give it a go based on the reviews that I did read. From the start, Leila Slimani has us absolutely captivated. Without giving too much away, the story is about a mother who has two children but who misses work life. So to resolve this, they hire a nanny to look after their children. The whole novel focuses on the nanny - her past, her present and her thoughts on her future and how to forge this. The book actually begins in reverse and starts with the ending but yet manages to keep us intrigued the whole way through, as we need to figure out the reasoning/absense of reasoning for this ending. In spite of an eeriness and sense of doom throughout the whole novel, Leila Slimani's extraordinary writing skills and sense of suspense keep us going right to the end. Interested to read some more of her work!

I found this book totally absorbing as I read it. For a start, it's beautifully written, in a honed, spare but graphic style in which every word seems to carry real weight. The sheer accuracy and economy with which it makes you see scenes, situations and emotional reactions is a continual pleasure. So, on a larger scale, is the diagnostic clarity with which it shows the fault lines of understanding between the separate but interpenetrating worlds of the Parisian bourgeoisie and the precariously situated immigrants on whom they depend for so many services. Slimani presents reactions from both sides in a finely nuanced, objective way, seeming to understand each perfectly, without passion or prejudice. Although I don't know what the rest of the field was like, I can certainly see it as a worthy winner of the 2016 Prix Goncourt. But it is unrelievedly bleak. That is the only reason I've given it four rather than five stars: not to express any reservation about its literary quality or the depth of its insight but as a restriction on the kind of pleasure it could give me personally. Touches of humour (even of the bleak kind you find in Beckett) or shafts of joy not weighted down with forboding would have made all the difference to me.

Beautifully written, very respectful of the language of Molière. This book won a prestigious prize le Goncourt a few years back a movie was made and it does read like a thriller however the base line has already been done and as beautifully written as it is it didn't move me how it should have it lacked soul and depth...was it deserving of that Goncourt I'm not sure ?

A shocking premise, outlined at the beginning - and Slimani still manages to build the tension even when you know already what has happened. Bitingly observed interaction between a bourgeois couple and the less privileged world of those they employ, with insecurities abounding all round. But it's a bit soulless - I didn't really care about any of the characters, and they didn't develop.

Very well written and insightful novel from the viewpoint of both a child's nanny and her professional employer's family in Paris. A realistic portrayal of contemporary Parisian family life and the issue of work/life balance. Touches on other social issues, such as the lives of the "sans papiers". I found the drama and structure a bit vague. There is a lot of character building and background with some flash backs, which are all excellent but there is a bit of a lack of pace. For me, the lack of detail in the ending contrasts with the incredible detail throughout the rest of the book. It's a very psychological book, tracing the internal downward spiral of this particular nanny. It's an incredibly well written book , I was probably expecting a thriller but it's more subtle than that.