Welcome to Litsy!

Clean, by Alia Trabucco Zerán (2023, transl. 2024)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Premise: A maid tells her story to the police when she comes under suspicion for the death of her employers‘ daughter.

Review: There‘s a lot about this that worked really well: I loved the premise, appreciated the way the class dynamics were presented in the Chilean context, and enjoyed main character‘s crisp point of view. ⬇️

Soft pick for me. Not buying into the blurbs describing this one as "suspenseful" or a "mystery". It is, however, one of the better renderings I've encountered of the inner-monologue of someone stuck in a repetitive, monotonous, unappreciated job (of which I have personal experience, albeit not for as many years as the narrator or without a reasonable expectation of escape). Not something I'm likely to return to, but well-written and nicely paced.

This was a fascinating listen as we hear a story from Estela, a maid to a middle-class family, as we know straight away a child has died and that Estela is telling her story from a locked room.

I thought some of the impact was lost at the end, with the introduction of the wider political unrest in Chile, but I wish I knew more about this background and its relationship to the socio-economic structures of the country before listening,

I expected more of a traditional mystery/thriller but I don‘t think that‘s a good representation. It‘s a bit dense and can get quite heavy (a child dies - we learn that very early on and the book unravels how we got there.) It feels more about class and agency than what happens to the child. It‘s interesting just not what I expected.

I feel bad panning a book, but I really didn‘t like this one. I did not find it thrilling or suspenseful, rather more of a trudge feeling ( but maybe that‘s the idea) Set in Santiago , Chile. The story of a housekeeper and the family she works for. I didn‘t bail though, I wanted to find out what happened… and I was reading it on a train, so I was stuck with it and propelled forward. The first half was good. Maybe a So-So 👍🏻