The Maid – Nita Prose

Few of us, when we stay in hotels, spare a thought for the humble housekeeper – the person who has to deal with our dirty laundry, both figuratively and literally, when we stay somewhere fancy. In Nita Prose’s debut novel, The Maid, the bit-player becomes the star.

Molly Gray the titular maid, and she loves her job at the Regency Grand Hotel. She loves returning each room to “a state of perfection”, she loves the clearly designated rules of etiquette that govern each interaction she has, and she even loves her uniform, wearing it as a shield that protects her from a world where she’s never quite fit in.

She’s considered odd by her co-workers; they call her Roomba the Robot behind her back, given her obsession with cleaning and her difficulties translating social cues. She used to be able to rely on her grandmother to help her interpret the behaviour of her colleagues and friends, but since the old lady passed away, she’s had to navigate it all on her own. This becomes much, much harder when Molly discovers the dead body of a guest in the penthouse – and she becomes the prime suspect in his murder.

The Maid is pretty much a highly sanitised version of Convenience Store Woman, with a murder mystery plot driving the action. Unfortunately, Molly isn’t quite as masterfully drawn as Murata’s Keiko.

At first, it felt like Prose just couldn’t decide how unreliable Molly’s perspective should be – so, as readers, we have no idea whether we should trust her perceptions or not. Then, Molly becomes repetitive, incessantly drawing upon her late grandmother’s aphorisms and mantras (a device that seems sweet at first, then cloying). By the end of The Maid, Molly is almost a caricature, not only missing social cues or failing to read between the lines, but bewildered by the simplest logical deduction. In short, she’s not really consistent enough to be completely believable.

And, without spoiling anything, I’ll say that The Maid takes a super grim turn in the final act. Prose crams a bunch of additional “twists” into the last chapters, adding events and characters that were completely unnecessary and felt un-earned to me. It seemed like Prose had written a perfectly serviceable denouement and conclusion to her debut novel, then her publisher told her to “beef it up a bit”, so she threw in some wild shit to keep them happy. It’s a shame, because the (presumed) changes introduce some plot holes that there’s no room left to fill, and overall it detracts from what was otherwise a fine-for-the-beach read.

Read The Maid on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)

My favourite Amazon reviews of The Maid:

• “Main character states one shouldn’t worry about what other people think, and then goes on to worry a lot about what other people think. A slog of a read.” – Stef
• “I don’t know if the reviewers are trying to help the author who has reportedly been an editor for a long time or if they have been paid off in crypto… I only gutted it out because all the reviewers talked about the twist in the end. It was formulaic and predictable. The only twist was to my intestines. All I could think about while reading it is that this is the adult version of Amelia Bedilia.” – J Scott Rudsenske
• “A five star hotel with no cameras? How are the police really that stupid? No one checked any one’s phone records? If you are intelligent, this book isn’t for you.” – cheryld