The Good Nanny

What begins as a dreary account of overpaid egoists (in this case, Manhattan publishing cognoscenti) develops into an intriguing tale of personal loss and moral degradation. A wealthy couple buys the home "to die for" in a small New York town, commuting to their jobs in the city. This requires a nanny for their daughters, and the title character appears--a cultured fine artist, a sophisticated yet down-to-earth black woman who likes to be called Sugar. Her wholesome contributions to the value-addled household lead to dark events. George Wilson chooses to play the antihero, Stuart Cross, with a vocal style resembling that of a 1950s science film narrator, though his supporting character work is much better. Still, this is a twisted and gripping listen written by someone who understands the machinations of modern culture. D.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

May 3, 2004
A starred review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a star.

THE GOOD NANNY
Benjamin Cheever
. Bloomsbury
, $23.95 (288p) ISBN 1-58234-122-2

The perfect nanny exposes the shortcomings of her not-so-perfect employers in this scathing satire by Cheever, author of the memoir Selling Ben Cheever
and three previous novels (Famous After Death
, etc.). Like a literary Nanny Diaries
told from the perspective of the beleaguered parents, Cheever's tart tale skewers its protagonists' ambition, materialism, literary pretensions and sheltered lives. Stuart Cross and Andie Wilde, a sophisticated pair with interesting careers in Manhattan—Stuart is an editor at a prestigious small publishing house, and Andie has just been promoted to the "enviable but not entirely respectable position" of top film critic for the New York Post
—have recently bought a huge house in the suburbs and hired a nanny, the estimable Louise Washington. Louise, who is "Miss Washington" to her employers but "Sugar" to nine-year-old Ginny and six-year-old Jane, is the ideal nanny (she reads Hilaire Belloc to her charges), but also frighteningly accomplished (she's an excellent painter) and threateningly black (her best friend is a nice guy who just happens to have spent some time in prison). Andie, feeling displaced, becomes more and more paranoid about the nanny's activities, while Stuart suffers a professional blow and is galled to learn that the Museum of Modern Art is interested in the nanny's paintings. Cheever is a remorseless observer ("Stuart turned to his girls. Ginny, his eldest daughter, the fat one, had a large stain on the front of her white blouse") and generally accurate social chronicler (though it seems unlikely that the refined Stuart would buy a house in a development called Heavenly Mansions). As this satisfying if sometimes stiflingly mannered morality tale builds to its startlingly violent conclusion, it becomes more than clear that it isn't the nanny Stuart and Andie should fear—it's their own selfish expectations. Agent, Kathy Robbins
.