Tuesday, September 17, 2019

"The Nanny"

Gilly Macmillan is the Edgar nominated and New York Times bestselling author of What She Knew, The Perfect Girl, Odd Child Out, I Know You Know, and The Nanny. She grew up in Swindon, Wiltshire and lived in Northern California in her late teens. She worked at The Burlington Magazine and the Hayward Gallery before starting a family. Since then she's worked as a part-time lecturer in photography, and now writes full-time. She resides in Bristol, England.

Macmillan applied the Page 69 Test to The Nanny and reported the following:
Page 69 is the start of a chapter about the detective investigating the human remains found at Lake Hall. Detective Andy Wilton, who is working class and no lover of the English upper classes, arrives at Lake Hall to interview Lady Virginia Holt. It’s not his first glimpse of the property but it is the first time he’s been inside, and he drinks it in, half-impressed, half-revolted that some people can own so much. It’s a great window into the tension between social classes that runs through the book and also the extremely privileged world that Virginia Holt and her family occupy. It hints at the fact that the Holts think themselves above the law. Andy also glimpses Ruby, Virginia’s eleven-year-old granddaughter, who is standing on the staircase, all dressed up in her grandmother’s clothes and luridly made up in her make up. Andy thinks of a David Lynch movie, emphasising how alien he finds the environment he has stepped into, and how surreal. The strangeness of the scene and the combative responses of Lady Virginia introduce a hint of menace.
Visit Gilly Macmillan's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Nanny.

--Marshal Zeringue