A beautifully written, heavy and bleak vision of modern parenthood and the juggle between work and family life - for both parents and nanny. The author astutely and simply picks holes in expectations and presents a Catch 22 without offering any solutions, or seemingly even sympathy. Slimani creates understandable, unlikeable characters you don’t want to identify with. They paint portraits of personality and power, the situation is bigger than the characters. The mood is deftly and subtly changed through the novel, both the reader and characters fail to notice or stall the shift until it is too late. Full, bleak and worrying modern fiction.
