Review of Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán

*Clean* by Alia Trabucco Zerán, translated by Sophie Hughes (2022). Published by Riverhead Books.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog, and fell back more into literary criticism. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

When you run a blog like this, where you reflect on the books and movies you’re reading about, you have a lot of time thinking about the kinds of books you’re picking up. As someone who thinks heavily about diversity and diversifying the books I pick up, I tend to critically approach what exactly I’m reading in the moment.

I recognized there were patterns in the books I was reading. While I do love Korean and Japanese literature from the bottom of my heart, as well as Asian American literature, I feel like that I needed to diversify beyond this. I wanted to read more Latin American and African literature specifically, as well as books from and by those with disabilities or on the fringes of society.

So when I went to my local library and saw Clean on its shelves, I picked the book up, read the jacket, then decided the synopsis was something I was very interested in. I did end up reading the novel quickly, as I was quite invested in what it had to say.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

A maid in Chile is cast as the prime suspect in her client’s daughter’s drowning.

Our main character in this novel is Estela, a 40-year-old woman from the Chilean countryside that has found work as a maid for a more upper class household. She leaves behind her mother in the countryside for the job, and she works for the señor and señora (as she calls them) and their young daughter.

We learn at the beginning of the novel that the daughter has died, and Estela is the one being investigated for her death. We don’t know what exactly happened until the end of the novel, but this book serves as a bit of a testimony for the woman being accused of the girl’s death.

Then the narrative rewinds back to the beginning of when Estela arrives at their home. All she ever wanted was to make enough money to send back to her mother and save up so that one day, she, too, could go back home and live comfortably. As we see throughout the course of the book, this reality might never actually happen, but we can dream with her.

She ends up working for the señor and señora for seven years before the incident happens. As the maid, she is able to see everything that goes on in the house, and even was the one to raise their daughter. The girl would reach for Estela instead of her own mother, which sparked some jealousy from the señora.

At the same time, there were a lot more issues brewing underneath the surface. I’m going to stop here with going further into the plot, but a big point of this novel is about how Estela, as a lower class maid, is the one who is able to see all of the secrets of a family far more wealthy than she will ever be.

Because of that, she has the most to lose. The poor always have more to lose than the rich, and resentment brews in both directions. However, Estela’s testimony is a reclamation of power, as she is finally able to speak about what she witnessed.

She was invisible enough for the family for them to reveal some intimate secrets throughout the course of the novel, but at the same time, she says nothing. She is powerless because of her lack of status, which is another tragedy in itself.

Overall Thoughts

Before this, I had never read a Chilean novel in translation. Heck, when I even think about it, I have probably never even read a book that was set in Chile in general. It’s an area I know nothing about, despite having studied a little bit of Latin American literature from the surrounding countries.

I’m really glad I picked this book on a whim though. I think it’s a brilliant way to critique social class and structures within contemporary Chile, and telling it from the maid’s perspective is something most would not even consider in real life. It’s highly effective in getting the point across, that’s for sure.

Go ahead and get yourself a copy of this novel if you’re interested in what it has to say! I think it’s worth picking up at least once, and the writing style itself is so smooth and works well with the story it contains.

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