CBR: The Nanny Diaries

 

My rating:

 

It’s certainly an entertaining page turner. You won’t be bored. But, you might be dumbfounded (like me) by wondering how can somebody (a 20+ NYU student not the least) be so incredulously naïve – read: stupid – to behave the way our supposedly lovely heroine did.

 

The story is about Nanny (the name of our heroine) taking up a nanny job in a filthy rich Park Ave household. The job is after all, besides the hard-to-come-by professor-assistant job on campus, the best money she can make “with her clothes on”. The book chronicles how ruthlessly she’s been exploited by her master, an evil Mrs. X – the mother of the little 4-year-old boy whom she nannies. The book attempts at revealing the grotesque underbelly of a “class” so much higher up than most of the earth-people we don’t even really care.

 

And at the end of the book, our Nanny took the high road (“with grace” I quote) after being discharged at the most unfair manner. (As a parting gesture, she urges the parents - the X’es - to love their little boy before it’s too late.) The ending shines an almost Communistic loftiness. Lame.