The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan

It does feel weird to just write a regular book review on here without expressly saying that things are so topsy-turvy right now. As I'm writing this, I'm on day eleven of social distancing. I have not left the house except to walk/train the dog, go to the grocery store or dog park, or do yardwork. But this also means that I'm reading a lot. So, here's just another book review. 

 The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan is a pretty good thriller.  Set in an old manor in the English countryside, it tells us the story of the Holt family and their eponymous nanny.  Jocelyn is devastated when her adored nanny disappears one night.  But many years later, when Jo is forced to return back to her childhood home with her own daughter after both she and her mother become widowed, the nanny returns to town.  Is this just luck?  Or is there something sinister lurking in the background?

So, let's go back to NGS's trifecta of evaluation of novels: setting, characters, and plot.  I'm sure there are literature buff out there screaming about theme, point of view, metaphor, and other elements of a novel, but I'm just going to focus on these three because it seems like those are things that I pay attention to the most. 

This is a great modern Gothic, really. The tense, gloomy atmosphere of Holt Manor is the major driving force of the entire story. It's the basis for the relationship between the villagers and the Holts, the way the detective treats the woman as he interviews them, and the class dynamics that exist even among members of the Holt family themselves. It makes you want to avoid the pond. You wrap yourself into a snug blanket because the iciness of the setting makes you chilly.

The characters are sort of caricatures of themselves, what with the evil nanny, the woebegone aristocrat's child who tried to leave, but is forced back when life circumstance prevail, the pre-teen sulkiness, and the uptight elderly dowager.  But what prevents this novel from falling into a boring abyss of pre-packaged melange is that the characters interact in interesting, real ways. The grandmother allows her preteen granddaughter to put on her clothes and makeup while they bake cookies and watch videos on YouTube. Those images and scenes make the sort of typical character types stand out.  The details make the characters in a specific, important way.

The plot is a bit lackluster, to be honest. I rarely figure out mystery plots; I think I would be a horrible police detective.  In this case, I pretty much knew the ending about 2/3 of the way through, but the biggest mystery was whether or not Jo would figure it out.  I thought that Macmillan did a good job of building up the suspense about Jo's own detecting skills.

So, while I did not find this to be a perfect novel, I did find it to be something that transported me to another place during a time when I definitely needed to be transported somewhere else.