The Nanny Diaries: A Novel

商家名称	信用等级	购买信息	订购本书
		The Nanny Diaries: A Novel
		The Nanny Diaries: A Novel

基本信息·出版社：St. Martin's Griffin
·页码：320 页
·出版日期：2007年02月
·ISBN：031237433X
·International Standard Book Number：031237433X
·条形码：9780312374334
·EAN：9780312374334
·装帧：平装
·正文语种：英语
·外文书名：保姆日记

内容简介 在线阅读本书

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.
作者简介 Nicola Kraus and Amme McLaughlin write together in New York City.
编辑推荐 "A national phenomenon." -Newsweek "Diabolically funny." -The New York Times "[Nanny is] Mary Poppins channeling Dorothy Parker." -Time "Impossible to put down." -Vogue "McLaughlin and Kraus...[have a] carefully calibrated sense of compassion and delicious sense of the absurd." -Entertainment Weekly  
文摘 PROLOGUE

The Interview

Every season of my nanny career kicked off with a round of interviews so surreally similar that I'd often wonder if the mothers were slipped a secret manual at the Parents League to guide them through. This initial encounter became as repetitive as religious ritual, tempting me, in the moment before the front door swung open, either to kneel and genuflect or say, "Hit it!"

No other event epitomized the job as perfectly, and it always began and ended in an elevator nicer than most New Yorkers' apartments.

***

The walnut-paneled car slowly pulls me up, like a bucket in a well, toward potential solvency. As I near the appointed floor I take a deep breath; the door slides open onto a small vestibule which is the portal to, at most, two apartments. I press the doorbell.

Nanny Fact: she always waits for me to ring the doorbell, even though she was buzzed by maximum security downstairs to warn of my imminent arrival and is probably standing on the other side of the door. May, in fact, have been standing there since we spoke on the telephone three days ago.

The dark vestibule, wallpapered in some gloomy Colefax and Fowler floral, always contains a brass umbrella stand, a horse print, and a mirror, wherein I do one last swift check of my appearance. I seem to have grown stains on my skirt during the train ride from school, but otherwise I'm pulled together--twin set, floral skirt, and some Gucci-knockoff sandals I bought in the Village. She is always tiny. Her hair is always straight and thin; she always seems to be inhaling and never exhaling. She is always wearing expensive khaki pants, Chanel ballet flats, a French striped Tshirt, and a white cardigan. Possibly some discreet pearls. In seven years and umpteen interviews the I'm-momcasual-in-my-khakis-but-intimidating-in-my-$400-shoes outfit never changes. And it is simply impossible to imagine her doing anything so undig
……

查看更多 下一篇