Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Spanish (Chile) by Sophie Hughes – Published 2024

The protagonist and narrator is Estela García, from the Chilean island of Chiloe but working in Santiago as a maid, or ‘nana’ to a wealthy family.
I lived and worked in Santiago myself for five years and know of many such arrangements.

Estela clearly resents the family, a lawyer, doctor, who enhance any difficulties between their class by being condescending and pretentious. They berate Estela for every oversight and expect her to raise their daughter Julia for them.

We know from the outset that Julia dies, any potential tension is in how and why. But Estela tells fer story for more than 200 pages before the death. That it is too long is one of the problems with the novel, but also due to a shallow treatment of the key issue of class difference, and the lack of character development, the novel never meets its potential.

My GoodReads score 3 / 5