This makes me think that either
1-The New York Times book reviewer partakes of crack cocaine, or,
2-They only read the first chapter.
Yes, this book has some hysterically funny lines:
- Speaking of the nanny interview: No other event epitomized the job as perfectly, and it always began and ended in an elevator nicer than most New Yorkers' apartments.
- After listing a child's endless food restrictions: This is Phase I of bringing me in the fold, of creating the illusion of collusion: "We're in this together! Little Elspeth is our joint project! And we're going to feed her nothing but mung beans!"
Ms. McLaughlin and Ms. Kraus just get better. I'd include more quotes, but it's the kind of book that takes a short essay to explain why you just snorted milk through your nose.
But then, you see, there's the plot.
The quick and stupid way to describe it is The Devil Wears Prada, with the increasingly psychotic boss woman, meets Sex in the City, where every woman is desperately trying to hook "Mr.Big," only to have him wriggle away for the next younger, thinner, sexier version.
Except, here, there's this heartbreakingly real four-year-old boy getting crushed by his parents' blindness to anything but power and status. All he wants for Christmas is a tree to decorate for Christmas and a Dad to hang the ornaments on the top branches. But his mom hired a professional ornament hanger and his daddy is . . . somewhere . . .working . . . .
His part-time nanny does her best to help him fulfill his needs, while the pit at the bottom of your stomach tells you it's not going to get any better. At the beginning of the novel, Nannie's mom tells her, ". . . I don't want you graduating on Valium because some woman with more money than she knows what to do with left you her kid while she ran off to Cannes." By the end, you believe that would have been the best case scenario.
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