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Lullaby Paperback – 24 January 2018

by Leila Slimani (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars 6,338 ratings
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The number-one bestseller and winner of the Prix Goncourt - set in contemporary Paris, a compulsive, riveting and bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity and motherhood.

The baby is dead. It only took a few seconds.

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect caretaker for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite and devoted woman who sings to their children, cleans the family's chic apartment in Paris's upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint and is able to host enviable birthday parties.

The couple and nanny become more dependent on each other. But as jealousy, resentment and suspicions increase, Myriam and Paul's idyllic tableau is shattered...
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  1. Print length
    224 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Faber Fiction
  4. Publication date
    24 January 2018
  5. Dimensions
    13.5 x 1.5 x 21.6 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    0571337538
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0571337538
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Lullaby: A BBC2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick
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  1. The silent apartment is completely under her power, like an enemy begging for forgiveness.
    Highlighted by 161 Kindle readers
  2. But in what black lake, in what deep forest has she found these cruel tales where the heroes die at the end, after first saving the world?
    Highlighted by 160 Kindle readers
  3. She drinks and the discomfort of living, the shyness of breathing, all this anguish dissolves in the liquid she sips.
    Highlighted by 136 Kindle readers
  4. ‘You shouldn’t try to understand everything. Children are just like adults. There’s nothing to understand.’
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Product description

About the Author

Leila Slimani is the first Moroccan woman to win France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. Her first novel, The Ogre's Garden - forthcoming from Faber & Faber in 2019 - won the Prix La Mamounia. Slimani is a journalist and frequent commentator on women's and human rights. She lives in Paris with her husband and two children.

Sam Taylor is the translator of HHhH by Laurent Binet and You Will Not Have my Hatred by Antoine Leiris.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Faber Fiction
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ 24 January 2018
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Main
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0571337538
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0571337538
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 253 g
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.5 x 1.5 x 21.6 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.6 out of 5 stars 6,338 ratings

About the author

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Leïla Slimani

Leïla Slimani

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Leïla Slimani is the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, which she won for Lullaby. A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, she is French president Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, she lives in Paris with her French husband and their two young children.

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Top reviews from Australia

  • SMNZ
    4.0 out of 5 stars No easy sleep found here
    Reviewed in Australia on 16 January 2018
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    This is not an easy read, yet it is very easy TO read.

    Slimani's tale of an absolutely abhorrent act is spun in such a delicate way you feel yourself caught, being pulled ever closer to the spider in the middle of the web who is not the event but the cause of it.

    Both Louise & Myriam give great insight into a modern day France, and the socio political & economic changes that have caused so many fine cracks to appear in the foundations of what was always done.

    At times l felt repulsed reading this. The children, the parents, their almost gluttonous love for their children; Louise's desire to belong, her willingness to love other people's most precious things; her ability to step back and judge, cooly...

    l have no doubt a mothers take on this will be different from mine as a non parent; and a fathers take will be different again.

    Strongly recommended.
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  • Ian Mond
    3.0 out of 5 stars A provocative novel that left me confused as it’s true intent
    Reviewed in Australia on 13 April 2018
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    I speculated as to whether Lullaby is an attack on feminism or an attack on capitalism. The question assumes Slimani is looking to lay blame. How else though to approach a novel that begins with the brutal death of two children, two children who would still be alive if Myriam had stayed home?

    Aida Edemariam, whose ecstatic review got me interested in the novel in the first place, says that, Lullaby “is a political book about emotional work, about women and children and their costs and losses.” Her review suggests that Slimani is looking to push buttons and provoke discussion on difficult topics. That’s fine but I found the tone of the novel to be less provocative and more didactic. Given that Myriam decides to go back to work because the gloss of motherhood has worn off and given her work as a lawyer has her working extraordinarily long hours and given she finds it difficult attending her own daughter’s birthday party and given she keeps Louise on after the fastidiously neat Nanny leaves a chicken carcass on the kitchen counter, a passive aggressive comment on wasting food, it’s hard not to blame Myriam for the death of her children, for delegating the task of motherhood to someone else. I say Myriam is to blame and not Paul because other than the odd over the top outburst he’s sidelined. This is a book structured around the perspectives of its female protagonists Myriam and Louise and as such it feels like the blame, if blame is to be handed out, rests either with the obsessed Nanny or the mother who gave up on motherhood. This is, possibly, an unfair reading of the book. Paul’s lack of presence may actually be Slimani’s loudest statement, that if he had been willing to share tasks and responsibilities with Myriam a Nanny may not have been needed. Then there’s the economic and power dynamics at play. Edemariam notes that Louise is white, which is a powerful statement on its own given as the novel clearly depicts, most Nannies are immigrants and people of colour (and for that matter so is Myriam).

    In the end I struggled with this Lullaby. Structurally, starting with the death of the children didn’t work for me. Maybe it would have if there was any depth to Louise but Slimani’s attempt to not make Louise a psychopath meant that she becomes a shell of a person with confused motivations. I know, I know, sometimes we can’t know why a person does something so awful, but Louise never felt more than a bland cipher, a means to convey a message.

    Justifiably this novel will provoke discussion and I’m sure others will be more open to the questions raised than I was. But I couldn’t help but feel that this was just another book blaming mothers for wanting to have a career and for taking that blame out on their children.
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  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put this book down!
    Reviewed in Australia on 13 January 2018
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    I read this in one sitting, it draws you in right from the first page. It isn't a long read but I couldn't put it down.
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  • Rêvvâ Tênâg
    4.0 out of 5 stars Good
    Reviewed in Australia on 11 June 2018
    Format: Kindle
    It started off really well. I was immensely engrossed, but then it went on a steady plane, but I was already invested and had to finish it...So you may or may not like this book. It hasn’t received the greatest reviews, but to me, this book is just like every other book made today - written in a similar way, slow in the same places, neither truly amazing, or really bad.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Catherine Sheridan
    2.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing book
    Reviewed in Australia on 14 May 2019
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Lullaby was an interesting book set in Paris but left me wanting more. Would give it 2.5 stars out if five
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  • Loren Smith
    3.0 out of 5 stars Unsettling, but not dazzling
    Reviewed in Australia on 27 August 2019
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    I didn’t *love* this book. Not because it wasn’t what I expected. Rather, because its emotional sucker-punch is right at the beginning, everything that follows is relatively flat. That is not to say it doesn’t cover some interesting themes, among them: loneliness, class, family dynamics, poverty, hardship, and mental illness. And Slimani’s writing is lovely. Perhaps if it had more of a narrative, it would have stuck with me behind that abrupt, sickening opening.
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  • Reuben
    3.0 out of 5 stars Better in French
    Reviewed in Australia on 24 September 2020
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Think the book would’ve been better in French. The translation might have ruined this one for me as it is an award winner. Still a good read though
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  • Jess Williams
    1.0 out of 5 stars What an exponential waste of time.
    Reviewed in Australia on 15 January 2018
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    An interesting premise to start with, that panned out to be an incredibly dull description of the nanny's life, which didn't really explain anything. It became clear that the Nanny was quite strange early on (the children's deaths aside), but the author's conveyance of what led her to kill the children was lackluster and inconclusive. I spent most of the book wondering when it was going to get twisty and interesting. Sadly disappointed, 11/10 would not recommend.
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  • Cliente Kindle
    4.0 out of 5 stars Ótimo
    Reviewed in Brazil on 2 December 2018
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    O livro é muito bom! A leitura é rápida e fácil. Tem uma história que já começa pelo final, mas isso não faz perder o interesse.
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  • Condearanda
    4.0 out of 5 stars INTERESANTE AUNQUE ALGO PESADO.
    Reviewed in Spain on 13 July 2019
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Resulta maravilloso por lo siguiente:
    1.- Genial la descripción de la vida de los trabajadores “pudientes” en las ciudades gigantescas como París, el afán de éxito unido a la sensación de abandono de los hijos o incluso de la propia vida, tanto esfuerzo para hacer más esfuerzo.
    2.- Maravillosa la exposición de la vida de las nannies, esa babel alucinante que a la postre cuidan lo que más queremos
    3.- Absolutamente conseguidos los personajes secundarios: Wafa y sus masajes, la suegra progre (...addicted to electronic screens and slaughtered animals...), Stephanie pasando de todo, el casero o la vecina con migrañas.
    Por el contrario adolece de lo siguiente:
    1.- Se pasa de duro, no hace falta un desenlace tan gore para describir una nanny loca, en un medio hostil
    2.- La narración de la tragedia, sobre todo conociendo el final se hace pesada, muy pesada, se masca y se masca la tragedia, pero ésta nunca llega, al final lees deprisa y solo deseas acabar.
    3.- Tanto realismo le falta otro realismo, el medio es hostil pero lo puedes usar en tu beneficio, si eres malo con los “papeles” existen gestores, tb hay asistentes sociales, hay un sistema médico que funciona regular pero funciona, sonando las las alarmas en tanto casos es raro que nadie las escuche, en fin, quiero decir que resulta al final poco creible

    He leído premios Goncourt mucho más profundos, quizá el francés de la autora es maravilloso, no obstante, en general lo recomiendo. Eso sí, es duro.
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  • Malati D.
    4.0 out of 5 stars A Warning to the Wise?
    Reviewed in India on 20 September 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Lullaby is about every parents' worst nightmare. How does the perfect nanny who allows busy parents pursue their careers without guilt turn into a murderer of the young children entrusted to her? The well off, entitled parents know very little about their nanny's psychiatric problems. She's been building up to this point. The prose is simple and lucid for which I'm grateful. Some writers just pile on adverbs and adjectives to step up the horror. But the act is horrific enough as it is without adding unnecessary emphasis. The novel reminded me of Ruth Rendell's A Judgement in Stone. Also written in simple prose, this book starts off by informing you that the housekeeper killed the entire family because she was illiterate, and then recaps the events leading to the massacre. During the retelling, the reader gets drawn into the life of the family all too aware it's coming to a close. I didn't get that feeling with Lullaby.
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  • Eloise Robbertze
    4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and sad.
    Reviewed in the United States on 2 May 2019
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Lullaby by Leila Slimani is a novel about every parent’s nightmare – the woman you’ve employed to look after your children, murders them!

    The novel opens with this scene – the children are dead – and explores the emotional journey the characters have endured to get to this point. There’s Myriam, a career-driven lawyer who loves her children with all her being but also revels in her brilliant skills that further her business dreams. There’s Paul, who loves his children just as much but seems to be mostly on the fringes of their lives. Then there is Louise who is the perfect nanny and housekeeper who they simply cannot function without.

    The character development of the three main characters is superbly done and enables the reader to feel part of the intense emotions and disturbing thoughts these characters experience.

    This is a study in the relationship between parents and nannies, between employers and employees, and between children and their multiple parental figures. It’s about how we entrust our most precious loved ones to strangers who we don’t take the time to get to know - who we consider “part of the family” on a very surface level.

    It’s a beautifully intriguing and terribly sad story at the same time.

    I loved it!

    #lullaby #leilaslimani #faber&faber
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  • Oliver Page
    4.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Portrait
    Reviewed in Italy on 23 May 2021
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    A novel that starts with a crime and its culprit. As such the book does not narrate the investigation of a crime but of the complex origins both social and individual behind what is apparently an inexplicable act of violence. Deeply insightful and convincing in its depiction of both characters and modern social setting, the novel convinced me above all for its unforgiving portrait of its characters that never falls into the trap of easy political correctness. This is an author who describes human beings in their social and political context with great insight into their egoism, fragility and unrequited needs. Recommended.
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