A novel occasionally comes along that attracts hordes of readers to a genre that they normally wouldn’t consider.  The Fifty Shades trilogy did it for erotica and Gone Girl gave a similarly positive lift to sales of mysteries.  The Perfect Nanny, published as Chanson Douce in France and as Lullaby in other English-speaking markets, looks like it might have the same impact on … what?  The domestic thriller or readable literary fiction genres?  Leila Slimani’s novel is a difficult one to classify, but one thing’s for certain.  Having won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in France, it’s far better written than anything E.L. James or Gillian Flynn are ever likely to produce.

At first sight the setting might appear gruesome and schlocky.  An apparently perfect nanny, a godsend to two busy working parents, murders the small children in her care.  But the plot, sensitively handled and never titillating, is a vehicle for some profoundly serious issues: race, class, parenthood and domesticity.  It’s an unsettling book because it reminds us of the casualties and consequences of the “wanting it all” mindset and the profoundly unequal societies we are busy creating.