I Don’t Know Why I Did It

I had Madame Bovary on the bedside table. Madame Bovary, for god’s sake. I had Kate Atkinson’s new novel in my library books. In the pile of books to read someday I had a Trollope novel and Alice Munro’s new collection of short stories and Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face. Yet I spent the evening reading Benjamin Cheever’s The Good Nanny. Which sucked. And what’s worse, I could tell it sucked from the very first chapter, yet I still read it. Though I must admit that I skimmed a fair bit, trying to figure out if it could continue to be so bad. It could.

How did I know from the first chapter? Because the characters were introduced thus: “Stuart Cross (no relation to the pens, thank you)” and “Andie Wilde (no relation to the famous playwright and pederast, alas)” and “Wallace Stevens (not that Wallace Stevens).” Then Wallace, an agent, hands Stuart, an editor, “a one thousand, one-hundred page manuscript titled Gone With the Wind. (Not that Gone With the Wind.)”

OK, so your father’s John Cheever and you know a little about literature. Still, this is not cute. This is shtick. Overdone shtick. Either you name your characters with cultural and literary allusions, and you go with it, whether seriously or humorously, or you snidely disdain the literary. But you can’t do both. It doesn’t work.

So yeah, I should have stopped there, but I continued; like I said, I Don’t Know Why I Did It.

Soon I came to this remarkable speech Andie makes to her husband Stuart, explaining why the eponymous nanny, Miss Washington, who is out with the children, cannot call: “She couldn’t have called…Remember the cell phone revolution you started? We all surrendered our phones. We never gave one to Miss Washington. But even you and I had our phones disconnected. We’re getting on this new plan you worked out. We just buy the phones. They’ll set it all up. No contract to sign. We were supposed to get the phones today, but they hadn’t come in.”

Ah yes, provide exposition for the reader by having one character explain the situation to another, disregarding the fact that he already knows all about it. Oh, you think she’s supposed to be sarcastically explaining to him what she knows he already knows? I don’t think so. That might work, except for the leaden lines “But even you and I had our phones disconnected,” and “We were supposed to get the phones today, but they hadn’t come in.” No, I’m afraid this is just bad, really bad.

And it’s not just the writing, it’s the whole premise of the book. First of all, um, in case you didn’t notice, Ben, the nanny thing has been done? Like, twice? At least? Oh, well, yeah, it was done by women, so I guess you might as well do it again and get it right. So, what does getting it right mean? Oh yeah, using miserable children and the working mothers who make them miserable as the foil for your humor. Loved it in The Nanny Diaries too. Not. Oh yeah, in The Nanny Diaries the mother didn’t work, so I guess your version is…even more misogynistic? Though of course you did create one good female character, the paragon of a nanny who just happens to be…black? I’m not sure I heard you…did you say mammy? Oh, you were saying that you challenged the mammy stereotype by making her an intellectual artist. Nice move. But then you killed her off. Which makes you…misogynistic and racist? Oh, no, that’s right, it makes you a social satirist! Yes, a social satirist who is neither original nor funny and can’t write for shit. But then again, your dad was John Cheever, so I guess you can do what you want.

Tonight I’m reading Madame Bovary.

[Yesterday’s flu progress: E had a good morning, was a feverish limp rag all afternoon, and picked up again for an hour or so before bed. M had a ghastly morning, but then ate guacamole and read all afternoon, though she still had a fever and has developed a terrible cough. I suppose it’s progress, but it feels pretty Sisyphean at the moment.]