The Nanny Diaries

written by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

Anyone who has ever smugly noticed the flaws in another person's parenting style (that includes pretty much all of us, right?) will find some enjoyment in this book. It's billed as a novel, but because the two authors spent a combined eight years working as real nannies for real Manhattan families, you know that there's more truth to this story than meets the eye!

To sum up the theme: a spunky, down-to-earth graduate student gets a job caring for the only child of a wealthy Park Avenue couple. The parents are condescending, dictatorial, and ungrateful toward the nanny, and they're coldly detached from their four-year-old son. Sounds like a somber story, I know. But the authors do a great job of picking on the upper-crustiness of the family, and wrapping it in such humor! The nanny's employers are just so rich and snooty (and their parenting shows it!), that you can't wait to keep uncovering more evidence of how they're completely out of touch with real life. Most of the anecdotes revolve around the wealthy, uptight mommy, who has way too much money and way too much time on her hands.

If you're a snobby Park Avenue parent, you'll probably be offended by this book. Everyone else will probably get some good laughs from it.

Really cool elements:

• For the most part, this is a quick, fun, easy read. Good choice for the beach or a vacation.
• Might seem like a minor point, but I liked how the main character in this story (the nanny) is named, intuitively enough, "Nanny." Similarly, the family for which Nanny works is called the "X" family — as in "I was hired by Mr. and Mrs. X to care for their 4-year-old son." Some will find this pretty cheesy, but I think the naming is a kind of cute way for the authors to send the message that they really are sharing some true-to-life stories and have genericized the names to protect those involved.

Not-so-cool elements:

• My major complaint — and it's a big one — is that, unlike most of the book, the ending was anything but funny. In fact, it might be so disturbing that you wish you hadn't read the book at all. The final chapter was abrupt, far-fetched, lacked closure, and felt quite mismatched to the rest of the story. Very disappointing, because the authors had built up such an entertaining groove by reveling in the parental sins of the X family, but then blew it by turning the plot dark and serious.
• A side story about Nanny's relationship with a young man felt like a cheap, raunchy afterthought to the main plot. Looked to me like a really lame attempt at baking in a "love interest" when none was needed.