Welcome to the crazed hell of normality

Mirella is a stressed Boston lawyer, husband Howard is an architect. They are busy trying to have everything. Their small daughter is a sulky dictator, their boy, heading for three, can't speak. Their colonial-period house, though a long commute from Mirella's office, is to be envied. Even the dog is straight from a design magazine. But their perfect world is in chaos.

Berne's first novel was A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1997), in which a thirty-something narrator recalls the Watergate summer of 1972 when her 10-year-old self was aware of the brutal rape and murder of a small boy in their suburb. It was also the time her father ran away with her aunt while her mother remained defiant. The narrator admits to searching for a scapegoat - and finding one. It is an exceptional novel, as is Berne's second book.

A Perfect Arrangement displays the same subtle intelligence, fluid prose and ability to lure the reader into the crazed hell of normal existence and to expose the dangerous power wielded by the apparently harmless. Into Mirella's naive domestic paradise enters Randi, an au pair also intent on perfection and motivated by desperate needs of her own. Unable to manage the children, Mirella needs more babies to consolidate her image of happiness. The characterisation is unnervingly exact though sympathetic, while the dialogue rings clear as a bell. Berne is a gifted realist, with something of the same vision as Anne Tyler, though Berne's is far, far blacker.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times