Rating: 
Summary: LOVE IT
Review: I love this book. I laughed out loud and have recommended it to all of my friends. I can't wait to read it again.
Rating: 
Summary: The Nanny Diaries
Review: Personally, I found this book highly entertaining, Nan has a great sense of humour which makes readers laugh throughout the book. I found all the characters very realistic and the upper class of New York are portrayed very well. The plot keeps you interested until the very end, at least I did'nt put it down.
A good, easy read - great for vacations!
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Combination of Emotions
Review: I could not put this book down. I recommend it to everyone. It's funny, sad, upsetting... you name it it has it. I read this book about 5 months ago and I still catch myself thinking of the little boy in the story (little G as I like to call him). It is definitely a must read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Disturbing Tale--the final word on The Nanny Diaries
Review: Kraus and McLaughlin's novel The Nanny Diaries is a disturbing tale; at once a testimony to the decadence of America's upper class and a tribute to the timeless virtues of selfishness and greed. The plot is simple: an upper class family hires a strapped-for-cash college student as a sole childcare provider, a role that soon turns into personal family slave. Over an extended period of time, the family mistreats the Nanny. The X's, as Mc & K name them, are miserable people. Both husband and wife are victims and partakers in marital infedelity, and neither care about their son. Mc & K write of the X's consumption patterns and wasteful living.
However the great irony of this novel is that the nanny is no better off than her employers. Nanny prostitues herself to the X family on a daily basis, constantly putting up with ill treatment for the sake of money. The 300 plus pages of complaining are nullified by the fact that the nanny/narrator grovels at the feet of the X's after being treated as a sub-human for months. Nanny stays because she needs the money to subsidize her extravagent lifestyle in New York.
The irony intensifies with Nanny's relationship with HH. She blows $20 on a club cover charge just to see if her love interest is at the establishment, and continues dropping dollars on cab fares as she follows him around, and on alcohol (which softens the emotional anguish she suffers from her job and romance). In a scene that may be read as a microcosm of the book, Nanny saunters up to her HH's (who, if we take the novel as an all-inclusive account of their relationship, she hardly knows) bedroom. There, HH tells her that Mrs. X began her current marriage by having an affair with Mr. X. and Nanny becomes very upset. She then regains composure, and decides to fornicate with HH again. Nanny embraces the same terrible cycle of greed, self-serving actions, and casual sex that she loathes in Mrs. X.
Though the novel is well written, especially in the development of character, Mc & K present an immensely sorrowful depiction of human nature
Rating: 
Summary: Take that posh NYC society!
Review: While it was quite entertaining it lacked in consistency. Except for the nanny in question and a couple more characters, no one else seems "alive". This book is like fast food: you eat it as quick as you order but you don't remember much about it past your last bite.
Rating:
Summary: A great read if it's not your life
Review: Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus's "The Nanny Diaries" is wickedly funny--and ultimately, an incredibly sad commentary on modern life. Fern Reiss, author, "The Publishing Game: Bestseller in 30 Days"
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Summary: Pick it up now! (You Won't be Sorry!)
Review: "Nanny" a 21 year old senior--majoring in child development at NYU -- has taken a part time job as the nanny of a 4 year old named Grayer. Grayer belongs to Mr. and Mrs. X. These folks are meant to typify the Park Avenue set. Mr. X is a high powered investment banker. He rarely sees his family. Mrs. X does not work & is too busy shopping to do much mothering. Nanny takes us through her process from the interview forward. Along every step of the way, I could hear my own reluctance, joy, frustrations, stress, and love. For example, Grayer spends much of Nanny's first day sticking his tongue out at her. When he isn't doing that, he makes his best attempts to lock her out of the home. It is times like this when that familiar voice inside my head says "What the hell is Nanny doing there, that kid is a brat!". I am a goner. My empathy is with Nanny. The Authors, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus use that to their advantage. Nanny warns us early on that the nanny/employer relationship is one that is rife with boundary problems. On her interview with a prospective mother, she mentions: "We will dance around certain words, such as "nanny" and "child care," because they would be distasteful and we will never, ever, actually acknowledge that we are talking about my working for her." (the idea behind this convention is that a taking care of so-and so's darling little child could never be work) A few pages later we find out that the Nanny's secret to being employed is to be white, speak French and employ proper punctuation. A Nanny needs to exhibit enough similarities to be employable, but must also must retain enough distance to not be a threat to her employer. So, while Nanny may be a white, upper middle class New Yorker (not too far off the mark from Mrs. X's own heritage), she is not capable of finding the correct lavender water, feeding Grayer the proper wheat free cookie, etc. Nanny receives so many corrections that I started to think that Mrs X's real job was to keep 'the help' at arms length. Boundary problems go both ways. When Nanny steps in to care for Grayer, who receives very little in the way of TLC from his 2 parent household, she becomes the proverbial work horse. It is her privilege to get to know and love this little child. She spends most of her time with him, to the point of becoming his primary caregiver. Even so, she still gets 'corrected' for minor infractions. The cost of a job well done, I suppose. It is refreshing to see a book like the Nanny Diaries. Funny, lively and entertaining. Just a great read! I recommend it highly -- along with another fun Amazon pick: The Losers' Club by Richard Perez
Rating:
Summary: highly readable and laugh-out-loud funny
Review: "The Nanny Diaries" is the novelization of two former nannies' worst experiences in the trenches of childcare-for-the-hideously-rich. The book chronicles its protagonist's trials and tribulations during the year she works for a particularly unreasonable family: her relationship with the child's mother deteriorates as the child becomes increasingly dependent on her and his father engages in a series of affairs and prolonged absences. This book is a terrific read. It's hilarious and continuously interesting (enough so to read in one sitting). It has moments of inconsistency, and there are a few off-color elements (some readers may be annoyed that the protagonist's name is Nanny and her employers' last name is X). But the sheer enjoyability of the story, and its grounded take on the lifestyles of the sickeningly wealthy, more than make up for its few failings.
Rating:
Summary: Money Can't Buy Me Love
Review: On the surface, this book is in the same genre as Confessions of a Shopaholic or The Devil Wears Prada-- it's a young woman working around money who has none of her own, in an awful job. But that's just the surface. A few things distinguish this book and make its popularity well-earned. One is that it's very well written! The shape of the sentences, the pacing, the observation and the way characters are revealed through dialogue and action ("show, don't tell")-- are very well-handled. And yes in a few places it's terribly funny. The Halloween episode, in which Nanny (her name as well as her job) has to take her small charge to a company party, in a chapter called "Night of the Banking Dead," did make me laugh out loud at the descriptions of how in her big round teletubby costume she had to be pushed by doormen into and out of cabs. The other thing that distinguishes this book is that at its center there is something very serious, and that is childcare and neglect. Grayer-- nicknamed "Grover" by Nanny, since he had no nicknames before-- is a lively, occasionally difficult, basically sweet and essentially unhappy four-year old. His wealthy parents view him more as an accessory than as a small human being, and when he does form an attachment to a nanny that's just around the time that his mother fires her because, as in the case of Caitlin, Nanny's predecessor, she had the nerve to ask for a week's vacation. Occasionally it's hard to understand why Nanny, an NYU senior with a fine mind, lovely family (who clearly have some money, too) and independent spirit submits to the slave labor that quickly becomes her job. Very early on Mrs. X asks her to buy things for a dinner party and at that point she's not so attached to Grayer so one wonders why she doesn't just say "I'd love to help you but I can't." But this is a bit of a mystery for Nanny too, and certainly to her family to whom she gripes. She does need the money-- although the Xes pay late and sometimes underpay-- and what she realizes is that she's becoming the prime caregiver for Grayer, who loves her and counts on her. Nanny is serious about childcare and she can't easily walk away. Many of the wealthy people portrayed in the book are unbelievably shallow and unloving, but there are one or two exceptions. One family surprises Mrs. X. when she asks "where will the children eat?" at a barbecue by answering "With us, of course." It should be noted though that that family lives not in Manhattan but in the suburbs of Westchester. Nanny is a wonderful character-- smart, empathetic, appealing. It's easy to understand how she allowed herself to be exploited. She gets caught in the middle of an affair Mr. X is having with one of his managers at the firm-- and she pities Mrs. X. And when she realizes Mrs. X. is the second wife, who got her husband after an affair, Nanny knows that Mrs. X. knows just how fragile her life has become. Not to say that Mrs. X. would be a great mother if she were happier, but she'd be a better person. Not that the Xes have any similar regard for the reality of Nanny's life... in any case, I found episodes and events from this book coming back to me. For all that it's a delightful quick read, it's haunting and very memorable. And yes, it's sad... almost a cautionary tale. But it rings true. These women (Kraus and McLaughlin) clearly know small children, the wealthy upper east-side society lady, and childcare, and it shows. A great read which deserves all its popularity!
Rating:
Summary: Loved it!
Review: I read it earlier this year and loaned it to two of my friends who also loved it. I really couldn't put it down! I am usually a Patricia Cornwell, thriller, mystery type. So this was a nice little change, although I was constantly frustrated with the nanny character, she was too nice!! I would have smacked Grayers mother!!!!
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