***Translated sample available***
***Picked by French Elle Top Ten books for March 2011***

***A best-seller with more than 50,000 copies sold in the past three months***

***Her three previous novels have sold more than 200,000 copies in hardcover and paperback***

A spicy tale, driven by crisp dialogues.

—Marie-Claire

Sylvie Testud has an infectious energy, an accurate sense of detail, and a true comic intelligence.

—Le Nouvel Observateur

A sharply observed but hilarious social comedy centered on an intelligent young woman doomed by an obsessive quest for a mythical perfect self.

Sybille Mercier truly fits the profile of the overachieving modern woman; a dedicated employee at a pet insurance company where she has just been promoted to director of communications, she keeps her apartment, as well as her office, in perfect condition. As soon as she returns home, she exchanges her high heels and classy suit for an apron and rubber gloves and starts chasing any dust or germs that might try to hide. Unfortunately, and predictably, Adrien, her fiancé, doesn't appreciate her daily transformation and begs her to hire a cleaning lady. After dozens of intense but fruitless interviews, Sybille finally meets her match in Fao, a cleaning lady from the Philippines, with the best possible credentials.

Sybille has, however, overlooked one tiny detail. Fao does not have working papers, and in order to get them for her, Sybille has to promise the moon to a local politician. But here again, as in work, love, friendships, and good deeds, Sybille shows excessive zeal. She tries to help and please everyone including her boyfriend, her boss, and now her angel-faced but deceitful servant. But the harder she tries, the further she diverges from her desired goals.

With wit and cheekiness, Sylvie Testud manages to turn all the tiny moments that make a woman's life a nightmare into a coherent tale of misread signposts and mistaken pathways. Testud shows us, in Sybille, an endearing and unlikely heroine whose trials and tribulations often mirror our own lives.