The Nanny and the Iceberg

A Chilean exile in New York, 23-year-old Gabriel McKenzie has a serious sexual complex: the specter of his father, a modern-day Don Juan, makes him fail every time in the bedroom. In Ariel Dorfman's keen comedy The Nanny and the Iceberg, Gabriel goes home with his mother in hopes of solving his problem. Dorfman marvelously tangles this story up with the intricacies of post-Pinochet Chilean politics. Gabriel was conceived the night of Che Guevara's burial. The next day, his father bet his best friend that he would have sex every day for the next 25 years, while his friend bet that he would become the most powerful man in the country. When Gabriel returns to Chile, both men are on track to win. This is also the year in which Chile is preparing to send a chunk of ice from Antarctica to Seville for the 1992 World's Fair (which actually happened). Our hero enmeshes himself and his family in this politically sensitive project, thinking that by putting both parents on the ice-collecting boat he can solve his bedroom complex. "That," says Gabriel, "was my blueprint for sexual success; like in some crazy porno Disney film for kids, I had to get my parents back together again." Of course, his problems are more complicated than that. As Dorfman tracks Gabriel's journey--in which his old nanny is powerfully present--he unleashes some of the major themes of existence: politics, family, lust, and anger. With a marksman's skill, he nails much of what's important in life and what's funny about it. The Nanny and the Iceberg lets life be messy, just as it is. --Katherine Anderson


Genre: General Fiction