畅销书推荐——《完美保姆》
If you've seen the 1945 film noir Mildred Pierce or the 2011 HBO miniseries of the same name (both made from James M. Cain's novel), you know that story punishes Mildred for being a working mother: Her marriage breaks up, her younger daughter takes ill and dies and her elder daughter ,Vida, turns out to be a murderer — all because Mildred wasn't in the home 24/7 to oversee things.
如果你看过1945年的电影《黑色米尔德里德.皮尔斯》或者2011年美国家庭影院HBO的同名系列迷你剧（两者都是从詹姆斯.M.凯恩的小说），你就会知道这个故事讲的是作为职场母亲的米尔德里德的遭遇：她的婚姻破裂了，小女儿病重去世，大女儿，维达，成了一个杀人犯—这全都是因为米尔德里德一天24个小时中有7个小时没能照看家里。
I feel about Mildred Pierce the same way I now feel about The Perfect Nanny, by Leila Slimani.
看了米尔德里德.皮尔斯和《完美保姆》的观感如出一辙，这是莱拉.斯利马尼的作品。
I recognize that it's good art and I hate how it guilt-trips working mothers.
我意识到这本书艺术性很高，但我不喜欢它对职场母亲的残酷刻画。
The last thing working mothers need to be reading in their nanosecond of downtime is this psychological suspense novel about a "perfect" nanny who snaps.
职场母亲们宝贵的闲暇时间里最不需要读的就是这部悬疑心理小说，讲了一个超牛的“完美”的保姆。
But, of course, they're exactly the audience who will be most drawn to it.
不过，当然了，她们当然也是被吸引最多的读者。
Slimani's novel, which has just been translated from the French, is inspired by a real life horror: the 2012 murder of two children in New York City by their nanny.
斯利马尼的小说是最近刚从法语翻译过来的，灵感来源于一起真实生活中的恐怖案件：2012纽约市的两个小孩被他们的保姆杀死。
In Slimani's hands, the unthinkable becomes art: The Perfect Nanny won France's most prestigious literary award, the Prix Goncourt, when it was published there in 2016.
在斯利马尼的笔下，不可思议的凶杀成了一种艺术：《完美保姆》一书于2016年出版后，获得了法国的龚古尔文学奖。
Slimani is the first Moroccan-born woman to be so honored.
斯利马尼是首位来自摩洛哥的获此殊荣的女性。
One can see why the judges were wowed.
你可以看到为什么评审们会被打动。
The voice of Slimani's omniscient narrator is chill and precise; her plot spares neither her characters' fates nor her readers' sensibilities.
斯利马尼的上帝视角的描述非常冷静而准确；她的情节既能刻画人物的命运又能照顾读者的观感。 The opening paragraph of The Perfect Nanny warns us this is a story in which the worst can happen and, in fact, just has:
《完美保姆》的开篇首段警告我们说这个故事里可能会发生最糟糕的事情，事实上，它是这么写的：
The baby is dead.
这个小孩子死了。
It took only a few seconds.
只花了几秒钟的时间。
The doctor said he didn't suffer. ...
医生说他死前没有受苦....
The little girl was still alive when the ambulance arrived. ...
当救护车赶到的时候小女孩还活着。
On the way to the hospital she was agitated, her body shaken by convulsions. ... Her lungs had been punctured ...
在去医院的路上，她焦躁不宁，身体不断地抽搐，抖动. ...她的肺被刺穿了...
As in the true story on which it is based, the broken bodies of the two children are found by their mother.
而在那个真实的故事里，两个小孩残破的身体是被他们的母亲发现的。
(Indeed, the dad in this novel barely registers.)
事实上，父亲在小说里很少出现。
The mom here is named Myriam, and she's a lawyer, happy to be working again after a stint of being cooped up with her very young children.
书中的母亲名叫米莉安，她是一名律师，在过了一段带孩子的紧巴巴的生活之后很开心能重返职场。
The nanny, Louise, is the central enigma of Slimani's novel — a human black hole who relentlessly sucks in and extinguishes the light in the family's life.
这个保姆，露易丝，是斯利马尼小说的核心之谜—她就是一个人性的黑洞，吸走榨干了这个家庭所有的生命之光。
After its grisly opening, The Perfect Nanny flashes back to Louise's entrance into the family.
在可怕的开场之后，《完美保姆》开始回忆露易丝进入这个家庭的场景。
Myriam, who (like Slimani herself) is Moroccan-French and has confronted racism in Paris, refuses to hire any North Africans.
米莉安，她（跟斯利马尼本人一样）是摩洛哥-法国混血，在巴黎也经历了种族歧视，他们不愿意雇佣北非血统的人。
We're told:
书中告诉我们：
[Myriam] fears that a tacit complicity and familiarity would grow between her and the nanny. That the woman would start speaking to her in Arabic. Telling Myriam her life story and, soon, asking her all sorts of favors in the name of their shared language and religion. She has always been wary of what she calls immigrant solidarity.
米莉安担心她和保姆之间会逐渐产生默契和熟悉。将来保姆就会开始跟她讲阿拉伯语，告诉米莉安她的生平，很快就会借着她们有共同的语言和宗教的缘故各种请她帮忙。她一直很警醒她们之间的这种同为移民的感情。
The couple interviews a parade of unsuitable women before the bird-like, middle-aged Louise walks in, perfectly perfect in every way.
这对夫妇面试了很多的临时保姆，后来就遇到了这个圆滑的中年的露易丝，她各方面看起来都很完美。
In a few short weeks, Louise takes charge, not only of the two children, but also of their needy parents.
短短几周的时间，露易丝就掌管了家庭，不仅管两个孩子，还要管他们的依赖性很强的父母。
Slimani's aloof narrator slowly reveals that Louise obsessively yearns for a second chance to perfect her own flawed mothering skills.
斯利马尼冷静的叙述徐徐展开了路易斯对重新修炼自己存在缺陷的母亲技能的第二次机遇过度渴望。
Of course, it's an impossible aim and the pressure mounts.
当然，这个目标是不可能达成的，压力也就与日俱增。
Every evening, Louise returns to a miserable rented room, which she regards as a mere "lair, a parenthesis where she comes to hide her exhaustion."
每天傍晚，当路易斯都会回到自己破旧的出租屋里，这里她只看成是隐藏疲惫的歇脚站。
Poetic phrases like that one abound throughout Slimani's novel and elevate it well above its formulaic premise, one that has inspired many a beware-the-au-pair Lifetime movie.
像这样的诗意的描写在书中随处可见，使它超出了原本刻板的印象，很多读者还以为是那种常见的讲平凡人生活的电影一样。
But, the irony is that for all its exquisite craft, the takeaway of The Perfect Nanny is pretty much the same as the message of those movies, as well as of that 1992 cinematic cultural touchstone The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, as well as of Mildred Pierce. Namely: Stay home, Mom.
尽管有着细致的描写，这部《完美保姆》的内核跟这些电影其实是一回事：比如1992年的电影文化里程碑《摇篮惊魂》还有米尔德里德.皮尔斯，也就是在讲全职妈妈。
Surely it's the enduring masochistic power of that nightmare of maternal inadequacy — rendered particularly vivid here through Slimani's stylistic gifts — that have made this slim novel an international bestseller. Talk about a guilty pleasure.
也许就是这种孕妇们的噩梦式的虐待行为—通过斯利马尼的风格化的凸显—让这本书成为了国际畅销书。让人们读到了一种罪恶的快感。