Estela comes to work as a maid at the home of a young couple made up of a doctor and a lawyer who have a little daughter, Julia, who will inevitably die. It's not spoiler, but the premise of ?Limpia?, the novel that CamilasBooks recommends this Saturday.
?Clean? is a novel by the Chilean writer Alia Trabucco Zerán, and it takes us in a linear but well-narrated manner to learn about this story where the differences of social classes intersect and can be seen in Chile, where this story takes place.
For seven years, Estela cleans and helps raise little Julia, who is plagued by anxiety and whose death we learn about at the beginning of the novel.
Although Estela has no knowledge of how to take care of a baby, she manages and becomes very involved in the life of Julia, a little girl with a not docile character who becomes a rude and rebellious being who has a endless behavioral problems, much of it due to the demands of her parents and seeking perfection in her daughter.
In Julia there is a lot of pressure and high expectations, as well as demands disguised as affection and concern.
?One of the most interesting points of this novel is that the main theme, one could say, is the class difference, not only in Santiago de Chile, which is where this novel takes place, but at the Latin American level in general, since That, as I mentioned at the beginning, there is this vision of people who work as domestic workers in some homes and witness many behaviors and many problems that happen within some families, at the same time they have to be very discreet? noted Camilasbooks.
Estela's role in developing this story is essential and Julia is the center of it.
Without a doubt, a favorite of Camilasbooks, which highly recommends this novel by Trabucco Zerán, who, among other recognitions, is the winner of the Anna Seghers, British Academy and Best Unpublished Novel awards from the Chilean Ministry of Culture, as well as a finalist for the Man Booker International.
Listen to the full Camilasbooks review and get hooked on this great novel.
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