📚 Newbies: Messy, messy
CLEAN by Alia Trabucco Zerán
👰♂️ The RONAREADer is getting married and going on their honeymoon! Instead of dipping into the archives, we’re sharing some of the most exciting new releases (or NEWBIES) we’ve been provided by publishers over the last year or so. We’ll be back to our regular programming in June! See ya soon! 👰♂️
Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán (trns. by Sophie Hughes)
From the first pages, we know a young girl has died and her family’s maid is being interrogated. By who? For what reason? The maid, Estela, tells us we’ll have to hear the entire story, her story, to find out.
We start at the beginning, when Estela leaves her mother in the Chilean countryside to work for a pregnant couple. She’s honest about having no experience with babies, but she’s hired anyway. Her goal was only to earn money for a short while and support her family back home, but seemingly overnight, seven years pass and she’s still caring for this family.
Estela’s days pass by—cleaning their floors, making their meals, doing the shopping, and caring for their young daughter. The family’s dynamic between themselves and with Estela is fraught and unusual, yet in many ways feels typical of working adults living together.
Are there rats in the family’s attic? Does Estela’s history with her mother make her a compassionate or antagonistic figure in the little girl’s life? And what is it that she hears in the dining room late one night?
I essentially read this in a single sitting. It moves quickly with short chapters, and the pacing is fast despite the crawl of dread lacing through the entire thing. Estela is the narrator but we get to know each character in this claustrophobic environment. Zerán’s writing on class, motherhood, and parenting isn’t always new, but still feels fresh in this tightly woven tale. I’m surprised I don’t see it on all the reading lists with women vs. the void themes. The ending had me a lil shook!
Thank you to Riverhead Books for our gifted copy!
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