In Clean, Chilean writer Alia Trabucco Zerán’s third book, Estela moves from the countryside in the South of Chile to work for an upper-middle-class family of three in Santiago. The couple’s only child, Julia, dies seven years into Estela’s tenure as housekeeper.

Trabucco Zerán’s prose is contained yet buzzing, as if always on the edge of a revelation. Of course, the main hook of the novel is the fact of the child’s death, but Trabucco Zerán, although generous in narrative and language, steers clear from any hint of a cheap twist. The death isn’t the point, apparent in how the novel almost breezes past through extensive depictions of it—the death is a consequential footnote, but a footnote nonetheless. It adds a sense of purpose; the journey to that end is taut, primarily because you are expecting a spectacle. Estela even hints at it repeatedly, how she knows her listeners (readers) would much rather have her get to the point than be met with her many digressions. It plays with the reader’s expectations of pacing in that way. There is an anticipation of a reward at the end of the trail, and so the reader plods on, no matter how thick the mud is on the way there. Trabucco Zerán described it as a “trap,” a showing of pretenses that aren’t necessarily false but are deceptive, conscious that Estela might not have any other opportunity to declaim in the way the interrogation room has allowed her to. And are readers really owed a spectacle? Every day is often mundane. Extravagance would betray the monologue’s dedication to realism, or the truth—Estela is in an interrogation room after all, stripped of all glitter. Her statements are bound to be picked apart like vultures to fresh death.

The monologue in general remains an interesting vessel for plot. While the narrator in my favorite read of 2025, Mother Naked by Glen James Brown, shrouds his grand monologue in shiny theatrics, Estela in Clean achieves the same emotional summit while climbing a different, more subdued route. Estela, a character assumed (or expected) to be docile and tightlipped, is given all the latitude to finally vent in the interrogation room, and the reader is left to witness the cathartic release. The mind’s voice engages in monologues exclusively, and something about externalizing the whole breadth of what was purely internal reads particularly naked and vulnerable. There is thus an ebb and flow of discomfort from being Estela’s witness, not unlike the reflexive instinct of glancing away to give someone the grace of embarrassing themselves in peace. While there is something voyeuristic in seeing her exposed from between the blinds, Estela’s awareness of her audience allows her to harness the discomfort to her advantage, evident in her assertive display of will and agency. There is no hint of doubt or restraint in her narration, the series of events already ripe and mulled over thousandfold to ever come across as otherwise. It does not feel rehearsed per se; her recollections are just too calcified to be malleable and subservient to change.

In many ways, Estela’s 260-page release is a product of temperance. Estela’s world as a housekeeper is made to revolve around the family employing her. Reality becomes suspicious being on Estela’s end of the dynamic, a sensation of doubt that Estela revisits time and again from her little backroom. In those seven years under the household, every semblance of control she has, she secures. Her bond with Yany, a stray dog she one day takes in, is one illustration of this—it is a relationship anchored not upon servitude but unadulterated warmth. It is thus emblematic that she attempts so vigorously to conceal Yany from the family, already cognizant that Yany represents the level of freedom she isn’t supposed to have. In another instance, Estela is policed for her use of the word “armpit” in front of young, impressionable Julia, in place of the more elegant “underarm.” These class-divide microaggressions are prevalent in the book, although uniquely packaged in a way that does not paint Estela’s employers as cartoonish, evil antagonists.

You might never have given it any thought, but words have a specific order. Cause—outcome. Beginning—ending. You can’t just arrange them any old way. When we speak, each word has to stand apart from the word before, like children lined up at the classroom door. From small to big, short to tall—the words go in a particular order. With silence, on the other hand, all words exist at once: gentle and harsh, warm and cold.

While the story meanders, the many digressions weave together a cord robust enough to carry the novel’s thematic weight. And what is a monologue if not a good old ramble?