Primitive People

When the heartbroken Simone flees her native Haiti, her best option to start a new life is a quick paper marriage to a Brooklyn cab driver and a job as an underpaid caregiver to two spoiled young children in the small community of Hudson Landing, New York.

But her new boss is nothing like what she's been led to expect. The self-absorbed amateur sculptor Rosemary Porter and her morose, eccentric children George and Maisie—deserted by their philandering husband and father—rattle aimlessly around their crumbling suburban mansion.

The people of Hudson Landing seem welcoming at first, but as Simone settles into this new home, her sense of unease grows. Rosemary's sarcastic best friend, Shelly, seems as suspicious of her as her shallow boyfriend, Kenny, a children's hair salon owner who appears eager to befriend the new au pair. A neighbor known only as "The Count" strings dead animals from trees for no reason anyone can understand.

As the local community roils with secrets and attempts to outdo each other with self-importance, Simone begins to wonder just where on earth she has fled to—and if it's any better than the violence and betrayal she left behind.

As always, National Book Award finalist Francine Prose "has a wickedly sharp ear for pretentious American idiom, and no telling detail escapes her observation" as Simone struggles to make sense of these odd people and this strange, new world.