Hollywood Nanny

This past week I picked up a frivolous little book called You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again!: The Adventures and Misadventures of a Hollywood Nanny by Suzanne Hansen. I would guardedly recommend this as a beach read, but not much else.

This book is a memoir, a non-fiction mud-slinger, that is both defaming and titillating, but is NOT well-written. Suzy went from a small Oregon logging town to Hollywood where she quickly found work as nanny to the uber-powerful Michael Orvitz, a Hollywood agent who had only recently started his firm when the book takes place, in the 1980's. Her naivete is grating and the writing moves from gossipy to whiney as the story progresses. As one might expect, the family's attitudes and behavior are shocking and dehumanizing to any other than the powerful and the story follows the lines more entertaininly set out by the authors of the Nanny Diaries...nanny loves the kids and sees them more than the parents, nanny makes some trifling mistakes that are blown out of proportion, nanny is fired unfairly.

With the movie version of the fictional, but based in reality, Nanny Diaries coming out soon, I would stick to that one if you're going to choose a nanny expose to read this year. Suzanne Hansen's just seems mean-spirited as she names names all over Hollywood.