Monday, July 19, 2010

Nannies Are Allegedly Still Thriving in Print

"The Godmother"
LINKcat status: 69 copies, 12 checked out
.
Link to July 14 New York Times article, "Nannies Still Draw a Keen Audience".

Excerpt: Years after “The Nanny Diaries,” the satirical 2002 best seller that hit a cultural nerve, the nanny novel lives on, showcasing complex and imperfect nannies whose personal stories intersect with thorny larger questions about race, class, immigration and parenthood.

“There’s an ongoing cultural fascination with this rich drama that plays out in your own home,” said Lucy Kaylin, who did dozens of interviews for her 2007 nonfiction book, “The Perfect Stranger: The Truth About Mothers and Nannies” (Bloomsbury).


Most women (and men) work because they have to, Ms. Kaylin said, so “the completely out-of-touch idle rich lady bossing around an immigrant is becoming cliché,” Ms. Kaylin said. At the same time, “race is a huge issue, for sure,” she said. “The women I interviewed found themselves confronting biases in ways that shocked them.


Other fiction titles mentioned in the article.

Bad Marie by Marcy Dermanski.
LINKcat status:  2 copies, 8 holds.

LINKcat status:  9 copies, 26 holds.

Two books constitute a trend?  Well, there is a third -- Minding Ben by Victoria Brown, "due out next year".

Retiring Guy suspects that a skilled reader's advisor would recommend only a handful of the 102 book titles found under the heading of "Nannies--Fiction" to a Nanny Diaries fan.

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