The Nanny Diaries By Emma McLaughlin

WANTED:
One young woman to take care of four-year-old boy. Must be cheerful, enthusiastic, and selfless--bordering on masochistic. Must relish sixteen-hour shifts with a deliberately nap-deprived preschooler. Must love geting thrown up on, literally and figuratively, by everyone in his family. Must enjoy the delicious anticipation of ridiculously erratic pay. Mostly, must love being treated like fungus found growing out of employer's Hermes bag. Those who take it personally need not apply.

Who wouldn't want this job? Struggling to graduate from NYU and afford her microscopic studio apartment, Nanny takes a position caring for the only son of the wealthy X family. She rapidly learns the insane amount of juggling involved to ensure that a Park Avenue wife, who doesn't work, cook, clean, or raise her own child, has a smooth day.
When the X's marriage begins to disintegrate, Nanny ends up involved way beyond the bounds of human decency or good taste. Her tenure with the X family becomes a nearly impossible mission to maintain the mental health of their four-year-old, her own integrity, and, most important, her sense of humor. Over nine tense months, Mrs. X and Nanny perform the age-old dance of decorum and power as they test the limits of modern-day servitude. The Nanny Diaries

It is one long anecdote disguised as a novel. A lot like Devil Wears Prada, it is just a laundry list of incidents while working for the shallow, designer-clad perfectionist. It reads more like an article in Us Weekly, In Touch, and or the Mecca of all celebrity rag mag's, People.

What it is clearly the flaw in novels like Nanny Diaries, and Devil Wears Prada is that the protagonist fumbles through the novel lacking any goal or purpose. Instead, these idealists, cute but not too cute young women lament over the horrors of working for demanding woman and display their own shallowness by painstakingly describing every brand and designer as if reciting some holy mantra. However, what I'll give Nanny Credit for, over Prada, is that at least Nanny is short and concise. Truly a gossip column of did you know… whereas Devil painfully goes on an on.

It’s a definitely a light read, requiring very little from the reader. However, from a cultural perspective it is interesting how we continue to vilify the successful woman and how we must focus on her flaws. Even more interesting is how the one doing the undercutting is other women. I don't dare pretend that these hardened woman don't exist but rather that there is now a whole market exploiting them.
English The Nanny Diaries (Nanny #1), Emma McLaughlin
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: بیست و ششم ماه سپتامبر سال 2016 میلادی
عنوان: خاطرات دایه؛ اما مک لافین؛ نیکلا کراوس؛ برگردان: میترا معتضد؛ تهران، البرز، 1383، در 497 ص؛
در این داستان خانم جوانی برای مراقبت و پرستاری از پسر بچه چهار ساله خانواده ثروتمندی استخدام می‌شود و باقی ماجرا. ا. شربیانی Paperback I read this book back when I was in college. This was actually the very first non-middle grade English book I ever bought! I had only bought some of Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries before then. But that was about it and none of that felt as grown up to me as The Nanny Diaries. Hmm, I just realized they were both 'diaries', huh? and to think I've never been one to keep any sort whatsoever! Anywho...

I still remember how I was so awed by the writing from the very first chapter: it was so sophisticated for my college-aged-English-as-a-foreign-language-mind. Too sophisticated in fact, I remembered using a dictionary manyyy times throughout reading the whole thing.

I was tempted to go back and see if it really was that good or I was just awfully deficient in my English at that point in time. And I certainly will, if only I could actually find the damn book!





Ps. I decided to lower my rating to 4 stars since it was probably my impressionable self who gave it all 5 stars at first. Although it will remain in my favorite shelf for mostly nostalgic reason ;)

Ps2. Grayer was such a cute name!

0312948042 This book was a gift while I was working as a nanny. At first it was funny, with all of the little observations that all nannies make- mainly about a certain, small subsection of women who hire nannies- the wealthy, entitled, narcissistic bitches.

As the story progresses, it becomes obvious that the children are the losers, the parents have no business being parents, and the nannies do nothing to help make the family a better place. Instead they whine about mistreatment, go along with abuse, and try to replace the parent with their own immature version of love.

The account was infuriating because there was a great deal of truth in it, and it made me so upset (recognizing the same characteristics in children, nannies and parents of my acquaintance,) that I finally refused to finish the last few chapters.

What made the whole thing worse is that the book is written in a vain, selfish-masquerading-as-selfless, preening, whiny voice, that made me want to reach through the page and tell her to grow some cojones (and take a writing class or two.)

Thanks but no thanks, this book is a binner. English Čitaocima nepoznata činjenica, ali živa istina... Narodna knjiga i Laguna tukle su se oko ovog naslova... :) Na moju žalost, jer sam tada još bila u NK, dobila ju je NK... A Laguna je čapila meni dražu knjigu Čik me uhvati... Volela bih da je situacija bila obrnuta... :) Ali ni jedni ni drugi se nismo usrečili s prodajom tih knjiga a zbog tuče su nas papreno koštale u autorskim pravima... Sada posle 10 i kusur godina od tada mogu hladne glave da sagledam neke stvari... Te dve mlade devojke (koje sam upoznala u vreme objavljivanja ovog romana) bile su trenutni hit... i mnogu su koštale... Deset godina kasnije malo ko se i seća ove knjige a kamoli da mu je omiljena ili da bi sada mogla da zainteresuje neku novu publiku... Zato sam se uvek klonila toga da kupujem knjige za koje sam bila sigurna da ne mogu izdržati sud vremena i čitaoca... :) Literature Fiction, Young Adult

Awful. I found the plot (if you can call it that) predictable and unimaginative and the characters flat. BO-ring. Wish I could get those hours back of my life. Can't believe they made a movie out of it. Although, if there are as many people watching American Idol as they say there are, I'm sure there's a ready audience for the movie. 0312948042 I read this during a series of fifteen-minute breaks at my job. In the interest of full disclosure, I have a bit of a grudge against any book packaged as chick-lit, the literary equivalent of low-cal fast food. However, I thoroughly enjoyed both The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing and Prep, and understand that genuinely good fiction is sometimes whored out with candy-colored covers so they'll sell, and I'm always happy to be taken by surprise when that's the case. Not so with this book. Now, I love the blood-letting of rich people just as much as the next person, but I got no satisfaction here. I hated the protagonist just as much as the mother for never standing up for herself or little Grayson, and I found her relationship with the Harvard Hottie (H.H.? Is that a nod to Humbert Humbert, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus? I promise, it will be lost on your readers.) completely implausible. It seemed like the authors were attempting to draw some sort of parallel between their relationship and that of Grayson's parents, i.e., this could be you in twenty years, Nanny, but then they chickened out. And the ending is terrible! Nanny can't even tell off that bitch to her face, she has to videotape it!

The Nanny Diaries 'The Nanny Diaries' by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus (ex-nannies) is an account of working for Donald and Melania Trump as one of many of Barron's nannies. Oh, wait! Silly me. This is not about the Trumps at all! The family, Mr. and Mrs. X, which is fictionally profiled by the main character, Nan, in this fiction novel is a composite version of the MANY Park Avenue families for whom the authors have actually been nannies. This book is a fictional account of working for a fictional wealthy New York City family whose behaviors are strictly a generic version of Park Avenue apartment owners! Since the book was published in 2002, it couldn't possibly be specifically about the President of the United States and his wife Melania despite any vague resemblance. The book is simply a generic exposé of the many many many wealthy people who live in Manhattan's Park Avenue luxury apartments and who try to pretend they married for love and not for financial gain and public image.

Most Park Avenue men are perceived in real life as powerful financiers who indulge themselves in constant sexual escapades to relax from their labors on Wall Street and business endeavors despite being married to beautiful ex-models who are as shallow and vapid as they are beautiful. You know, those eternally fashion-conscious and dieting trophy wives who are continually exchanged for younger and thinner blank-faced-by-constant-botox-injections dollwomen as the aging financier gets more and more obese, balding and ever more narcissistic. Nothing like the Trumps. Pardon me.

Poor Barren, uh, pardon me again, I mean Grayer, the fictional four-year-old for whom Nan has been hired to act like a real mother. For Nan, the child Grayer is a person and a toddler. To the X's, Grayer is someone in the way of their extremely competitive social life, especially for Mrs. X. Grayer is messy, loud and needy of constant attention.

Mrs. X cannot spare a moment for Grayer, though. Plus, Grayer's sticky fingers and desires for hugs mess up Mrs. X's minks and their latest designer furniture. Mrs. X has to concentrate on maintaining her beauty and on keeping Mr. X in the marriage. Whatever that takes. Since Mrs. X knows nothing about business, she concentrates on being useful in other ways to Mr. X - like on being thin and thinner, keeping the apartment and their stuff spotlessly photogenic for business functions ('party' is a word which doesn't seem to fit these gatherings) purchasing the newest in-season high-fashion clothes all of the other trophy wives are wearing. Mr. X has a straying eye, constantly checking out the other trophy-wife possibilities. Children are not part of his self-indulgent lifestyle, even his own kids, unless they are made to suit his public image. Children are strictly for Christmas family photos taken for business purposes until they are sufficiently trained up to be the picture- perfect accessory every businessman who has made it has to have for business. Like a wife and several concubines, uh, mistresses, and $100,000 watches and cufflinks, and a Park Avenue apartment.

Lucky Grayer! Mr. X pays for music lessons, private schools, martial arts/swimming exercise classes and French language lessons, while Mrs. X constantly shops and attends charity lunches, both making sure their kid will one day make the family proud by not needing either Mr. or Mrs. X for anything beyond red-carpet photographs for their political base! As the gofer servants, nannies, housecleaners, and cooks are constantly being fired whenever Mrs. X is unduly disturbed by Mr. X's lack of interest more than he normally demonstrates in Mrs. X, and as a side effect of this being Grayer cannot attach to anyone for love and affection, Grayer will certainly grow up meeting family expectations as a cardboard cutout of a person and son!

After all, it takes a hollowed-out narcissistic person to be one of the tribe of insensitive selfish wealthy people like Mr. and Mrs. X!

I hated the wealthy characters in this book, but nonetheless it describes reality. I was a secretary to Presidents and Vice-presidents of major telephone and insurance companies. This is how they really acted. The Nanny Diaries This is what happens when you go to a Goodreads book swap and pick up a trashy book, thinking Oh, i'll read this on the beach someday, it looks mindless. And then you start reading it before bed one night to rest your brain. And then you stay up for three hours reading it, not because it's good, but because it has a plot that is clear and fast-moving, and that is more than you can say for all those high-falutin books that win awards for talking about the moonlight falling on a burning rabbit. And then you don't get any sleep and are tired at work because you were staying up reading The Nanny Diaries, for crying out loud. Does that mean I liked it? I guess. It won't win any prizes for writing poetically about moonlight falling on burning rabbits, but I read it all, in two days. Curse you, Goodreads book swap! English If you must insist on reading chick lit, I recommend this one. There's a romantic subplot and lots of shopping and snarky best-friend banter, of course, but the main relationship in the story is between the main character (called Nan or Nanny by everyone in the story) and her four-year-old charge, Grayer.
Both authors used to be nannies in New York City, and you can tell they really enjoyed venting their frustration about past employers in this book. There's the controlling, neurotic mother, the absent father, the evil mistress who leaves her panties in the family's apartment (leading to a hilarious scene where Nanny enlists two of her friends to help her comb the apartment searching for the panties), and a whole cast of nannies who suffer every kind of abuse from both their employers and their charges. The writing goes from hilarious to heartbreaking as Nanny experiences every ridiculous aspect of the hidden lives of the super-rich.

I would also recommend this book to anyone who likes the Gossip Girl series: it's a good opportunity to look inside the same rich Manhattan society, but from the (much more interesting) perspective of the help. 9780312948047