"Chanson Douce" is nothing short of a modern tragedy. It starts with the startling sentence: "The baby is dead", and then describes in detail the suffering of the other child and the bloody crime scene. The rest of the novel explains how this came to be, and gradually the story unfolds of a young mother who decides to pick up her professional life again after having stayed with the children for some years. They look for a nanny and find the ideal one, Louise, who indeed initially appears to be perfect, but as we all know and suspect: that is not the case.
The book's geography is almost limited to the flat of the young couple. It describes the intimate relationships between the three adults and the children, and the changing nature of those relationships and of the characters themselves. They all circle around each other with changing perceptions, intentions and moods, all asking questions about their place in life, to the level of being suffocated in their limited space. In a way, the end was inescapable. The space in the novel as well as the possibilities of each individual to grow and expand, slowly contracts as the story evolves, and the moments of trust, and joy, and personal development, are inexorably reduced to a small point in space, not because of some grand happenings, but rather to a multitude of little things that keep tightening the plot to its inevitable end.
Leïla Slimani is both highly acclaimed and denounced. For this novel she received the prestigious "Prix Goncourt", and several other literary prizes, and rightly so. On the other hand, her first novel "Dans Le Jardin de L'Ogre" received lots of negative reaction from the conservative (Moroccan) community because of its open sexual nature, including female sexual desire, which was then even exacerbated by her book " Sexe et Mensonges: La Vie Sexuelle Au Maroc" ("sex and lies: sex life in Morocco).
"Chanson Douce" is not very uplifting as far as the story goes, but it's uplifting to read a new voice in French literature.
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