Listas, guapas, limpias
A student goes back to spend the summer with her sick grandmother in the poor neighbourhood where she grew up. Everything that happens during that long August will change her forever.
Summer is just beginning and the protagonist of Clever, Pretty, Clean wants to leave her boyfriend, but something is holding her back. She is equally indecisive when she arrives at a party full of strangers and is asked to choose the next record, or when she’s out shopping with her mother and has to pick a brand of frozen pizza for dinner. Even when she is talking to her childhood friend, Yaiza, she’s unable to open up about her plans for the future. This feeling of emotional paralysis is nothing other than her conscience kicking in over every one of the decisions, big or small, that she must make now that she’s an adult woman in the eyes of the world.
Clever, Pretty, Clean is journalist Anna Pacheco’s first foray into fiction. Written in the first person, this is a biting, intimate account of a woman in constant conflict with her political ideas and the social construction of her class and gender. The novel is full of references to the pop culture of the 90s and 2000s, the exploration of female sexuality and a veritable torrent of ideas brimming with black humour.
PRESS
«If writing, said Nabokov, is to caress the details, Pacheco knows how to write. And she writes. Wonderfully.» Miqui Otero, international bestselling author of Simón
«Anna Pacheco raises the stakes.» Jenn Díaz, El Periódico
«Listas, guapas, limpias, a story of initiation of apparent simplicity that hides some depth in its portrait of the millennial generation and its contradictions. […] Relentless […]. A story that promises the reader happy hours in books to come, because this first one uncovers a a refreshing, breezy voice.» Elena Costa, El Cultural
«With a fresh style, far from solemn, with a great intuition for dissecting even the tiniest of the details, Anna Pacheco draws a grim, acid and lucid portrait of the middle class.» Laura Ferrero, ABC
«Anna Pacheco provides a lucid and humorous look, with pride but without nostalgia.» Laura Casielles, La Marea
«With mastery, with hook, with force and without mercy. […] Pacheco, with clear, conversational prose, tells us about class conflicts, the snobbery of intellectuality, family relationships and friendship.» Rosa Martí, Esquire
«Pacheco excels in a great clairvoyance in reflecting doubts and insecurities and shines in the details: she explains well and beautifully. The writer undoubtedly comes out the winner of this first test.» Jordi Garrigós, Ara
«Listas, guapas, limpias is a more than exciting first step for new voices to narrate the time of those of us who have lived a youth far from the hegemonic frameworks of the media […] Pacheco adds a triple and vital vindication in her first shot; as a young woman, as a poor woman and as a woman.» Yeray S. Iborra, Mondo Sonoro
«Anna Pacheco’s technical skill to weave a lie, to make it plausible and even representative of a whole generation, […] what Anna Pacheco does is to point out that women’s experience is always artificially determined by gender and class narratives, and she does it from the virtue of that very artifice: by writing a good novel.» Eudald Espluga, La Fronde Magazine
