Infinite Books

Molly works as a maid in the Regency Grand, a five-star hotel. In her words, this is the work she was born to do. Every morning she puts on her maid uniform and gets her trolley. “There’s nothing quite like a perfectly stocked maid’s trolley early in the morning. It is, in my humble opinion, a cornucopia of bounty and beauty.” Armed with this, she is ready to bring 20 or so guest rooms back to “the state of perfection.” This is her world where she feels her best. However, she’s not like other maids in the hotel. Molly is on the spectrum, and the social situations cause her severe anxiety, even bringing her to fainting. It used to be easier when her Gran was alive – they lived together, and Gran raised Molly with high standards of cleanliness, warmly and patiently explaining everything. But Gran died, and Molly was left alone. 

Then the day comes that changes Molly’s life. “Today at work, I found a guest very dead in his bed. Mr. Black. The Mr. Black. Other than that, my work day was as normal as ever.” The detective assigned to the case is not as brilliant as Lt. Columbo (Molly and her Gran used to watch all episodes multiple times), and Molly becomes a prime suspect. Eventually, she is arrested. The situation becomes serious.

This engaging, cozy mystery is Nita Prose’s debut novel. The author’s real name is Nita Pronovost, and she’s the vice president and editorial director at Simon & Schuster in Toronto. She mentioned in her interviews that she didn’t really plan to write a novel. The idea was born while she attended the London Book Fair in 2019. Upon returning to her hotel room, she stumbled across a maid who was cleaning the room. The maid jumped into a corner, holding the author’s training pants that she had left tangled on the bed. The thought crossed the novelist’s mind – cleaning is such an intimate process, and this maid knows a lot about me, yet I don’t know anything about her. On her flight back, the voice of Molly, the maid, was born, clear and strong. The entire prologue was written on the plane, literally on a napkin.

Molly’s voice reminded me of two other characters I loved – Eleanor from “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine” by Gail Honeyman and Fuyuko Irie from “All the Lovers in the Night” by Mieko Kawakami. Just like these two young women, Molly is different. In social interactions, she may not recognize right away “the bad eggs” from “the good ones” (Molly’s description of people she encounters) but “with the little help from her friends,” to paraphrase a well-known song, she overcomes her problems. Her Gran was right in telling Molly: Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

I’m glad this book became very popular – there is even a film in production. Molly, the maid, deserves to step out of the shadowy corner of the room. As she says – “we are all the same in different ways.”

THE MAID by Nita Prose, Ballantine Books, 2022