My French Life™ BOOK CLUB - The Perfect Nanny: Past the first staggering chapter

[Jacqueline]

FIRST CHAPTER REVELATIONS
Do the narrator’s early revelations puncture the suspense, or do they act as an incentive to reading on ?

[Jacqueline]

Both options can be argued, though if you continued reading after the first chapter (which I assume you did) , the second one has a stronger appeal. Technically, if in a crime story, there's a murder at start and the perpetrator's name is known immediately, it's not a whodunit anymore. Suspense is punctured in that respect. However another form of investigation takes place instead. What lead the nanny-murderess to commit such a horrible crime? She was so perfect at the beginning ...

[Jacqueline]

From our facebook community page thread
Katherine Hammond Gallé : I am almost halfway through the book. I like the writer’s strategy. They are an incentive to keep reading on.
I keep looking for clues as to how and why his happened as I read each chapter.
Jacqueline Dubois Indeed Katherine, we need to know why all this happened, what made an ordinary looking , apparently normal, nanny commit such an evil act. Therefore we become some sort of reader-detective.
That's it, I think this is the writer's tour de force, the reader gets completely involved!
Lisa Norris Well it’s a pretty awful way to start a book. But now I’m sucked in.

[Jacqueline]

Jacqueline Selken I am reading on my kindle. I am 50% through - somewhat unsettling story since we know what is going to happen from the get-go.
Alisa Bearov Landrum You know the what but you have to read the book to learn the why. That is what the book is about. So many tragic flaws in the classical sense.
Jacqueline Dubois When this novel was first published it was praised for being unique and original due to its unusual and shocking opening line 'the baby is dead'. I thought the French intelligentsia then had a lapse in memory because there IS another such novel, it's 'A Jugement in Stone' by Ruth Rendell , a crime story involving a servant and her employers famous too for its arresting first sentence "Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.". The 1995 French movie 'La Cérémonie' by Claude Chabrol with Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire is based on Rendell's novel.

[Jacqueline]

Carolyne Lee I'm reading this in French as it's not difficult in terms of the language level. To answer your question Jacqueline Dubois, even though the 'ending' is revealed at the start, this doesn't puncture the suspense for me, but actually heightens it, as I want to know what could possibly have motivated such a horrible crime. I don't think I could have read this in English. Even though I'm fluent in French I rushed through the graphic crime scene, almost skimming really, so it wouldn't lodge too firmly in my head. But in English it would have definitely 'lodged' in full technicolour. The plot is very carefully constructed with the gradual accretion of nuanced details. But in terms of description it seems more like a mass-market thriller than a literary prize-winner, although so far I'm only halfway through, so I could be judging too hastily. I'm glad to be reading it, though, as I don't normally read thrillers or crime novels, and as I've said before Annie Ernaux is my absolute favourite French writer, from whose work 'Chanson Douce' is a million miles away.
Jacqueline Dubois Can't wait to discuss this with you next month Carolyne ! your remark on reading it in French and not in English is really interesting as I did the opposite for the exact same reason! I don't normally read 200-page easy French new fiction (but I'd rather it be crime than existential angst). However, it's well written and deals with universal contemporary issues, enough common denominator then for all of us here. In addition, Leila Slimani is currently under the spotlight for many reasons (appointed by Macron to champion French Language, her article on #metoo in Liberation, her interviews in the anglo press etc) ( but I have reservations).