Clean by Alia Trabucco Zeran

Clean by Alia Trabucco Zeran

Chilean fiction

Original title – Limpia

Translator – Sophie Hughes

Source – Library book

I had read her earlier book, Remainder but it was the year I stepped back from doing so much of the Booker international longlist, and it was one of the books that year I didn’t get to. There always seems to be one I just never review in the rush to review them all, which I usually want to do before the shortlist is announced. Anyway, when I saw this was out, I decided to wait and see if it would turn up in my local library to order in, and it did, so I ordered it in. I had wanted to read her nonfiction book that came out around female killers. I will do so when I see a copy that is cheap enough to buy. Anyway, this is her second novel to be translated. The previous one made the booker shortlist, and this tale of a nanny is as good as the earlier book, if not better. I really was drawn into the narrative here.

I didn’t see the señora the next morning. She left for work without saying goodbye and called me at around three.

Estela, make a note of this, she said.

Educated, hard-working, a discreet maid.

I was to defrost the chicken breasts and stuff them with spinach and toasted almonds. I should also make roast potatoes and prepare a round of dry pisco sours.

Nothing like a homemade pisco sour, she said, as if she were talking to someone else.

The señora wanted to know if I knew the measures. I told her I did, but she repeated them to me anyway. Three times she warned me not to overdo it on the sugar.

Nothing worse than a sweet pisco sour, she said.

After that she asked me if I could go to the supermarket.

Estelita, she said, can you get angostura bitters, lemons and organic eggs?

One of the very precise shopping lists she has to deal with

Estelle is a nanny. As the book opens, we discover she has been locked in a room by the couple she has been working for. What follows is her telling us of the events that lead up to her getting the job and what happened whilst she was working for the couple. What we see is a woman broken by this couple and the events that lead to the death of the daughter. Julia dies after she has been many for seven years, but it is how, over time, Estelle has lost herself as she falls foul of how this couple treated her over those seven years. It is a gaslight of a young woman by the couple, a class tale of power and who has it. But this is also mirrored by events away from the house. But it is those unseen souls in a home, those working for those with money, and how they get treated is at the heart of this story, and what happens when it all goes wrong like it does here.

By now you’re probably wondering why I stayed. It’s a good question, one of those important questions. Do you feel sad? Are you happy? You know the sort of thing. My answer is the following: Why do you stay in your jobs? In your poky offices, in the factories, in the shops on the other side of this wall?

I never stopped believing I would leave that house, but routine is treacherous; the repetition of the same rituals – open your eyes, close them, chew, swallow, brush your hair, brush your teeth – each one an attempt to gain mastery over time. A month, a week, the length and breadth of a life.

The señora deducted the cost of the blender from my pay, then got over the impasse. That’s what she said, ‘Estela, I’m over that impasse?

This is a question you do ask as you read about what is going on in the book

This is a gradual book. Things at the start seem ok tyes. She struggles to fit in, but then it turns and twists; the couple have sex, and she captures them. She looks at Senora’s dress; each little thing that happens makes them treat her hard. This is a story of a young woman who is powerless over time. In those seven years, we see her get more and more under the thumb of this couple. All this happens as we see the power struggle happening outside the house, and she is on the opposite side of it, those powerless, those unseen. There is a great line in Gosford Park where one of the detectives basically dismisses the servants as not having any involvement in anything as they are just there doing a job and aren’t important. What I loved so much is how our Narrator, Estelle, draws us into her world as we see how she ends up locked in a room. You think I’d done this, but would you do it if you were her? There is almost a Fait acompli about her story. We hear about couples doing this every few years, taking young women, and then they go from Nanny or Maid to slave or prisoner of the couple. This is one of the first books I have read since the booker prize this year. I think, oh that it should be on the longlist. Have you read any of her earlier books?

Winston’s score = +A is One of the year’s books so far for me .