Nanny

So over the long weekend, I read 'The Nanny Diaries' by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. Most of the reviews I read (yes, I'm one of those people who reads something them goes back and reads everything I can find on it to see what other people think) say the book is 'funny.' My friend at work who lent me the book said it was 'cute.'

Don't get me wrong, there were funny parts of the book but overall, there was nothing cute or funny about the situation Nanny, the main character, ended up in. She meets the X family while job-searching for the new school year so she can put herself through her senior year at NYU. The book chronicles the year that she works for the Xes and the genuine love and regard she has for her charge, Grayer, a precocious 4 year-old who has everything but what he wants: his parents attention.

Some ascpects of the book are cliches: Mr. X is cheating on Mrs. X. Nanny's parents are the polar opposites of people like the Xes. She meets a boy that lives in the same building as the Xes.

What really struck me and left me feeling sad and angry when I was finished with the book is how little the Xes seemed to care for Grayer. They give no thought as to what would happen to him when the unceremoniously fire Nanny and she leaves thinking "I can still hear him screaming for me." Nanny and Grayer became a team and the parents only cared about themselves. Grayer didn't get accepted to a private school for which he already owned a sweatshirt, so Mrs. X focused on him not wearing the sweatshirt...not his father's tie that he took to wearing when the father sort of moved out of their place.

The book ended sort of abruptly, leaving me wondering what would happen to a kid like Grayer without someone to love him like Nanny. There would be other Nannies, of course, but she had a hard time convincing him that she wouldn't leave him like the others...only to be cast out. Would Grayer renounce his parents's world and grow up to be the opposite of the horrible people they became? Or would he embrace the life, emotionally cutting himself off from others for his entire life?

I was sort of hoping for an epilogue to tie things up but I suppose that once a nanny and child are no longer together, it's best to keep it that way. It was hard enough for me to give up my sporadic baby-sitting assignments; let alone have full-time charge of a child, then abruptly have to let them go.

One of the first thoughts I had when reading this book was to compare it to "Bonfire of the Vanities," by Tom Wolfe, especially when Nanny described the mothers of the children she'd taken care of. The term "social x-ray" came to mind; as that was the term Tom Wolfe employed when discussing the emaciated, impeccibly dressed, superficila women in his book. I was also reminded of the character of Carol played by Catherine O'Hara on 'Six Feet Under' because both Mrs. X and Carol (she of the west coast film elite, not the upper east side elite) both played "how much can I abuse my workers before they snap." And snap they did.

My favorite parts of the book were when Nanny interacted with other nannies. These women were all from very different backgrounds, but they had one thing in common...they all worked for people who had more money than they knew what to do with...and more time.