Clean by Alia Trabuco Zeran, translated by Sophie Hughes, is a probing novel about class, bias and a crime. The reader is hooked on the first page, told that a child has drowned, under mysterious circumstances. The narrator, sitting in a cell, speaks directly to the reader.

The narrator, Estela Garcia, had moved from a rural town to Santiago for greater economic opportunity. She was hired by a wealthy, professional couple (a doctor and corporate executive) to be their maid and, soon enough, nanny for their expected baby. For seven years, she has lived in a tiny, sparsely furnished room, not even leaving it on her one day off each week. It is a claustrophobic environment. Her relationship with the couple is merely transactional, and we come to understand her life in terms of endless lists of household chores that the senora leaves for her to do each day. She is treated as a human being just once a year, on Christmas Eve, when she gets to eat dinner with them, dressing up in the white blouse and dark skirt she wore the day she arrived. After the holiday meal, which she had prepared, she serves dessert and cleans up in her usual way. The only other day when she feels they “see her” is the day she learns of her single mother’s death in the Chilean countryside.

Julia, the daughter in Estela’s care was a difficult baby and an even more challenging child. Julia is filled with rage at her remote but demanding parents, who set forth rigid expectations of her, whether it’s in academics, or in her swimming or piano lessons. Often she displaces that rage on “nana” Estela. She also turns it on herself, obsessively chewing her fingernails till they bleed, or violently throwing herself in the swimming pool when her father is bullying her into learning to swim. The incident foreshadows the child’s death by drowning, of which Estela is suspected.

The tension in the household grows. Estela shares with the reader her constant sense of being overworked and undervalued. For seven years, she kept her anger to herself, silently internalizing daily slights while doggedly performing her duties.  Meanwhile, unrest is growing in Santiago, and one day Estela gets swept up in the protests against class differences and mistreatment of workers. Walking with the crowd, Estela relives every unjust humiliation she has ever been subjected to, and every injustice ever visited upon her late mother, also worked to the bone. Estela finds a moment of relief when her rage finds an outlet with the instigators throwing stones.

There are touching instants of closeness between Estella and little Julia, and tender moments between Julia and a shaggy, mongrel dog whom Estella has secretly permitted to visit in the laundry. These gentle flashes are all the more poignant because of the tensions filling every hour of their lives.

The atmosphere in the house is suffocating, both for Estela and the reader. The city could be Santiago. Or San Antonio. Or Los Angeles. Or any other place where desperate and powerless people migrate to better their lives.

In the end, we still don’t know whether her story is being heard and understood. We are left with a cri de coeur by Estella: “Hello? Can you hear me? Is anybody there?” How many others are struggling to be known? This lean book, short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2019, packs a powerful punch.

I welcome your feedback in the comments section. Click upper left to return to the home page then hit “Leave a Comment.” Book recommendations welcome. To be alerted when a new blog is posted,  look for “Follow’ in the upper right portion of the home page, enter your email and click on subscribe.