Clean

May 1, 2024

International Booker Prize finalist Trabucco Zer�n (The Remainder) offers a novel about Estela, who kept house for se�or and se�ora when their daughter was born and for seven years afterward. Now the rebellious daughter is dead, and Estela, who is being interrogated, tells the full story. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 19, 2024
Chilean writer Zerán (The Remainder) delivers a propulsive story of class differences in Santiago. After Julia, the young daughter of a successful doctor and lawyer, is found dead, having drowned in the family’s pool, Estela, their longtime maid, is brought in for questioning. Sitting in an interrogation room, Estela recounts her decision to leave her home in her mid-30s to find work in the capital and divulges information about her employers. She describes stumbling upon them having sex in the dining room and retreating when they notice her, after which their cries get much louder. In addition to cleaning, she’s forced to double as a nanny for the “fragile” Julia, and she learns secrets about the family, such as the mother’s use of birth control pills and antidepressants. Zerán employs Estela as the novel’s lone narrator, smartly crafting a version of events that suggests the maid’s innocence, even as Estela admits to bottling her rage, leaving the reader to wonder whether Julia’s death was accidental, a suicide, or murder. Though Estela’s recollections become repetitive as the novel’s climax nears, Zerán keeps up the momentum with short chapters and Estela’s appealingly snappy voice (she frequently tells her interrogators to “write this down”). This is bursting with intrigue.

September 1, 2024
A maid tells the story of a child's death in a series of meanders. On the first page of Trabucco Zer�n's novel, the narrator, Estela Garc�a, offers a deal to the people who may or may not be on the other side of a mirrored glass pane: "I'm going to tell you a story, and when I get to the end, when I stop talking, you're going to let me out of here." Estela, it seems, is waiting to be interrogated in connection with the death of a girl, Julia, the daughter of a couple for whom Estela has worked as a housemaid for seven years. What follows is Estela's account of her time as a domestic, from her responding to a want ad--"Housemaid wanted, presentable, full time"--to her experience working for the couple, whom she refers to as "the se�or and se�ora." Estela clearly resents her bosses--he's a doctor, she's a lawyer, and both are condescending snobs, chiding their employee for every oversight and expecting her to essentially raise Julia for them. Estela is painfully conscious of the class differences between her and the couple, and she disdains their family, "an unhappy little girl, a woman keeping up appearances and a man keeping count: of every minute, every peso, every conquest." Estela talks for more than 250 pages, eventually getting to the story of Julia's death, which is of course tragic but also (perhaps by design) anticlimactic. Trabucco Zer�n has crafted an interesting narrative setup, but she can't quite make it work--Estela's frequent asides to her apparent interrogators ("Did I tell you about this?" "Do you see what I'm getting at?") quickly wears thin, and the suspense never really materializes. Her treatment of the theme of class differences is shallow, and the character development just isn't there. A novel that can't get itself off the ground.

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Starred review from September 1, 2024
Clean is the opposite of what readers will feel when they finish this novel by Chilean author Zer�n. Domestic worker Estela Garc�a moved to the big city to work, aiming to make her adored mother's life easier in their hardscrabble coastal village. She ends up with an upper-class couple she calls se�or and se�ora. What this couple values is appearances. An unreliable narrator who self-medicates with pills from the se�ora's stash, Estela keeps the household running, everyone fed and clothed, and cleans up every mess; she is the silent witness to the adults' secrets, a marginalized and dehumanized member of the household. Estela's efforts to find connection and affection are tragically, painfully doomed, her links to her own family and home stretched thin and broken. When the couple's young daughter dies, Estela ends up in an interrogation room as emotionally sterile as her employers' house, where she tells her story to an unseen panel of judges behind a one-way mirror, which becomes the reader's perspective. While Zer�n's uncomfortable, fascinating, lovely, and affecting novel is set in contemporary Santiago, Chile, Hughes' splendid translation assures it will resonate in many more places where people live with the alienation and superficiality of late-stage capitalism.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 13, 2024

Zer�n (The Remainder) delivers a tense, literary thriller about a maid and the well-to-do but troubled family she works for. The story opens with the maid, Estela, making a desperate plea to be released from the locked room in which she's been placed, about to be interrogated about the death of the young daughter of her employers. If she tells the full story behind the death of the girl, she bargains, the people behind the one-way mirror must release her. But, as Estela explains, finding the beginning of the story is not as simple as it may seem. She decides to start with her arrival at the house shortly before the daughter's birth but takes many detours before ending on the day of the death in question. What follows are dehumanizing experiences of a live-in maid losing touch with reality and humanity, as well as the implosion of a family that seemingly has everything. Estela's fast-paced monologue about what she's seen in her employers' house touches upon class, power, wealth, and violence. VERDICT Readers will tear through this slim, highly recommended novel to discover the fates of Estela and her employers.--Jennifer Renken

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.