Sue Keller, whose mother died when she was a child, is drifting through life in New York after the recent death of her father. She’s avoiding human contact as much as possible, until she bumps into Anneliese, who tells her she used to be Sue’s live-in nanny. At first, Sue doesn’t recognise her, but then the memories come flooding back and she finds herself desperate to cling on to this woman who represents a part of her vanished childhood. But there may be more to Anneliese than Sue remembers: why did her father never mention this beloved nanny? What happened to her after she left the Kellers’ home? And where is the line between love and obsession? Nanny Dearest (Quercus, £9.99) is American writer Flora Collins’s first novel, and it’s one to race through, the sense of looming dread growing exponentially as the truth about both Sue and Anneliese starts to seep out. If, like me, you were joyfully terrified by The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (starring Rebecca De Mornay) in the 1990s, then this is the thriller for you.
Italian author Elena Varvello’s Can You Hear Me? was the story of a small community in northern Italy riven by some very dark crimes. Varvello’s Just a Boy (Two Roads, £16.99), translated by Alex Valente, tells of another tiny Italian community, Cave, where terrible things have also happened. The boy at its heart is 17, and much loved by his parents and his two sisters. They can’t quite believe it when rumours start to spread that he has been breaking into his neighbours’ homes and stealing things. But then he commits an attack that will change everything, for himself and his family, for the rest of their lives. His crime spreads its tentacles throughout the novel, but Varvello is more interested in exploring its fallout – how his mother has never been able to move on, driven to despair by her son’s actions; how his father has struggled to survive; what it’s done to his older sisters. Pietro, the father, finds a notebook filled with his daughter’s handwriting, her brother’s name scrawled repeatedly on the page. “The weight of that name – the enormous rock around his neck – pulled him to the floor, his back against the bed and his hands pressed to his mouth.” Varvello’s boy of the title is never named, but his presence is all-encompassing – although it is only towards the end that we start to see the world through his anguished eyes in this darkly eloquent and moving novel.
