📍 Chile 🇨🇱
This is the story of Estela García, narrated by her, sitting in a room, to an unknown audience, most likely, the readers. Estela works as a housemaid in Santiago for a wealthy couple, the señor Cristóbal Jensen and the senõra Mara López, who is pregnant when Estela joins them. She also assumes the role of nanny to their child, Julia. Estela spends seven years working for the family, being both, the most obedient maid and the most doting nanny. Her original plan was never to remain in Santiago for so long, away from her mother and the Chilean countryside. Despite her innate hatred for her job and her intense longing to be with her mother, she continues serving the family so that she can provide comfort and financial assistance back home. However, things take a turn for the worse when there is a sudden, suspicious death in the family (revealed on the very first page of the book) that is labelled a murder, and Estela becomes the likely suspect.
Clean is an ominous, atmospheric novel. The characters seldom interact with each other and there is very little dialogue. Despite this, Estela presents us with vivid imagery of the people around her and their relationships. For the entirety of the book, we remain inside Estela’s mind experiencing every situation through her point of view. Her voice is dominant, resounding, clean and crisp, even though, as a maid she remains submissive, docile and mostly mute. Class divide, social hierarchy and status become quietly conspicuous in the few interactions between her and others. The couple’s privilege and affluence shape Estela’s rage, envy and resentment, giving them a life of their own as she meanders through her mundane existence.
Julia, the child, is portrayed as precocious and problematic, with behavioural issues and a difficult relationship with food. She is both obstinate and yielding, switching effortlessly between the two. There is also the interesting character of Yany, a dog who becomes both a source of emotional distress and a medium of catharsis for Estela. Her somewhat skewed relationship with Yany provides a nuanced, indirect insight into her struggles with accepting affection.
Alia Trabucco Zerán is a Chilean writer whose debut novel, The Remainder, was critically acclaimed and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2019. Clean has been translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes, who has been nominated for International Booker Prize five times. It also won the prestigious Prix Femina Étranger in 2024, a French literary prize established in 1985 that specifically recognises the best foreign novel translated into French. Zerán has written Clean as a psychological thriller that cleverly masquerades as social commentary, as well as a satire on societal class struggles and the economic disenfranchisement that prevails across large sections of Chile. Through Estela, she gives a voice to the unheard, unseen, overlooked and often dismissed.
A chilling robbery sequence in the book automatically transforms from fear and intimidation into an exploration of classism and discrimination. Zerán’s writing is confident, cerebral and candid. She deftly introduces complex emotional situations with a composure that always carries an undercurrent of palpable anxiety. Zerán has given us an unlikeable protagonist who is curious and cunning and never relinquishes her stoicism even in the midst of chaos, but who is also very demanding of our attention and empathy.
Clean remains an unfinished story because it was never meant to be finished. It was never a thriller to be solved or a murder mystery to be decoded. Alia Trabucco Zerán keeps us wondering about everything as Estela narrates a cryptic climax, assuming that we can read her mind.
But can we, though?
~ JUST A GAY BOY. 😧
