In Alia Trabucco Zerán’s second novel, “Clean,” a 7-year-old child has died. Estela García, the maid for a wealthy family in Santiago, Chile, sits alone in her cell, pleading her case to the authorities who might be listening: “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.”
The mystery surrounding the death of the girl is a powerful source of suspense. “It’s right that you understand how I came to be locked up, the events that led me here,” Estela says. “And for you to glimpse, piece by piece, the girl’s cause of death.” She is acutely aware that information is her only currency, and she intends to wield it.
Trabucco Zerán’s debut novel, “The Remainder,” a finalist for the 2019 Booker Prize, sends a trio of young people road-tripping across Chile. (Both novels were translated by Sophie Hughes.) “Clean” is a more claustrophobic novel; it’s not a spoiler to say Estela never leaves her cell, and the story she recounts is largely confined to the home of her employers, Mara and Cristóbal.
Estela is at once hyper-visible — every action is scrutinized, every misstep pounced on — and unseen. She is subjected to endless humiliations. When Estela is caught trying on one of Mara’s dresses, she is ordered to wash it before returning it to the closet, as if she were unclean. A broken blender is docked from her pay. She is invited to join the family for dinner on Christmas Eve, but is expected to prepare it, clean up and serve dessert.
She contemplates leaving, but the monotony of the job — the numbing boredom, the dissociation, the rage — is like a nightmare from which she cannot wake: “I never stopped believing I would leave that house, but routine is treacherous.” Her only tether is her mother, who is thousands of miles away. On Sundays, Estela’s sole day off, she rarely leaves her room. Any attempt she makes to create a bit of emotional shelter is hopeless; her bond with a stray dog comes to a particularly devastating end and, later, a bid to break away from the home leads only to a more profound stripping of freedom.
Before long, Estela’s account adopts a familiar pattern. We encounter the promise of information and then a swerve. The repetitiveness of her days begins to bleed into the narrative itself — although to Estela every detail is salient, every digression in service of a greater truth.
Estela’s relationship with the girl, Julia, is more dynamic. Julia is emotionally disturbed; she is prone to fits and often refuses food. As Julia grows older, she treats Estela horribly, as a life-size plaything. In one scene, she tells Estela, whom she calls “Nana,” to lay down in the grass so they can pretend it’s her funeral. She then orders Estela to open her mouth and stuffs it with a “fat fistful of dirt.”
Yet there are also moments of uneasy alliance between them, born not of care but a need to survive in the same house. They keep each other’s secrets for a time.
Finally, Estela shares the information she’s been holding back. I won’t reveal the particulars, but I will say that this reader had been anticipating a more potent revelation.
In the end, “Clean” is a novel more interested in both the power and limits of storytelling. Is it even possible for Estela to tell her story in a way that will compel those in power to listen? How are we revealed by the stories we choose to believe in, and the stories we turn away from?
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