The Perfect Nanny

The Perfect Nanny is a thriller written by Franco-Moroccan journalist and author Leïla Slimani. Published in 2016, the novel is inspired by the 2012 murders of two white American children in New York City by their caretaker, a naturalized American citizen born in the Dominican Republic. Slimani resets the narrative in Paris, France, and the nanny she depicts is a native French woman and white. Slimani reframes the crime to explore themes of racism, classicism, and sexism in relation to motherhood and caregivers. The Perfect Nanny won the Prix Goncourt, France's top literary accolade. This study guide refers to the 2018 Sam Taylor translation, published by Penguin Books. The original French title is Chanson Douce (2016).

Content Warning: The Perfect Nanny depicts violence (murder/infanticide), spousal abuse, and child abuse. Themes of racism, sexism, and classism are prevalent.

Plot Summary

The Perfect Nanny is related by an omniscient third-person narrator. It opens with a shocking scene of a nanny, Louise, killing the two children in her care, Adam and Mila. Most of the remainder of the book is a flashback, going back to a year before the murder and following the events that lead to it.

One year before the murders, Paul and Myriam Massé, are looking for a nanny for their children, Adam and Mila. Although Myriam has stayed home with the children until now, she is eager to return to her career as an attorney. She doesn’t enjoy being a housewife or a stay-at-home mom. However, she’s also nervous about entrusting her children to someone else’s care. After rejecting several stereotypical candidates as nannies (immigrants, women of color, nonnative French speakers), Paul and Myriam hire Louise. Louise is well-kept, polite, and is a native French speaker. She is, to Paul and Myriam, the “perfect nanny.”

Louise quickly proves indispensable to the Massé household. She doesn’t just care for the children. She also cooks and cleans and fixes items around the house. She is willing to come early and stay late. She even ends up sleeping over at the Massé home one to two nights per week.

Paul and Myriam decide to bring Louise on vacation with them to Greece, telling themselves that she can care for the children and they can have a more relaxing vacation without stressing about the kids. Tension arises during the holiday when Louise reveals she can’t swim—and thus can’t go into the sea with the children. Paul is annoyed by the revelation but takes it upon himself to teach Louise how to swim. It’s the first significant moment when Paul and Myriam are forced to acknowledge and confront the class differences between themselves and Louise.

As the narrative progresses, such moments of tension become more frequent. Racism, classicism, and socioeconomic disparities often inform such moments of tension. Myriam hates that Louise refuses to waste food, saving every last scrap, but Louise can’t let things go to waste. The Massé family receives a notice from the tax office, telling them that they need to garnish Louise’s wages because she owes back taxes. They are irritated when confronted with Louise’s personal money issues. Louise brushes the situation off as if it were a mistake, unwilling to reveal the depth of her financial burdens.

As tensions rise in the Massé household, the narrative reveals bits and pieces of Louise’s background. Louise had an abusive husband, Jacques. Her daughter, Stéphanie, ran away from home. She has debts, which she inherited from Jacques. She has no friends or family to rely on, apart from one sole acquaintance—another nanny she meets at the park, Wafa. Louise also has a history of struggling with her mental health; she previously received mental health treatment at the Henri-Mondor hospital.

Louise kills Adam and Mila, though the novel does not depict the murder itself. The final chapter jumps to an epilogue, told from the point of view of Captain Nina Dorval, the detective investigating the murder. Despite resolving to carefully trace the events of the day leading up to the violence, Dorval does not understand why Louise killed the children, It is implied that she never truly will.