Photo: Penguin Random House
Leila Slimani?s bestselling thriller, The Perfect Nanny, opens with two short sentences you can never unread: ?The baby is dead. It took only a few seconds.?

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15 working mom confessions If you love dark, propulsive thrillers, you?ll be hooked. And if you?re a parent, you?ll be forced to read it with one eye open. The novel?a ?whydunnit? about a seemingly impeccable Parisian nanny who ends up murdering her charges (based on a similar real-life case in New York)?is so astute on the peculiar difficulties of modern family life, I found it almost physically excruciating to read. Like a good horror film, it offered a safe environment in which to explore all my latent fears. From the first page, Slimani and her cool French authorial voice seemed to be perched beside me, one manicured finger pressing down on my deepest psychological bruise: the guilt of being a working mother. The book has already sold more than 600,000 copies in France, where it won the prestigious Prix Goncourt. Just out in English, it has been translated into 18 languages, with 17 more to come. In France, the novel has been so universally applauded that president Emmanuel Macron offered Slimani the position of minister of culture, a post she refused with a ...