SOURCE: McClennen, Sophia A. Review of The Nanny and the Iceberg, by Ariel Dorfman. Review of Contemporary Fiction 20, no. 1 (spring 2000): 182-83.

In the following review, McClennen praises Dorfman's literary experimentation in The Nanny and the Iceberg but notes that the nontraditional narrative “wavers on the absurd.”

The Chilean Pavilion at the 1992 World Expo in Seville featured an Antarctic iceberg as its main attraction. This surreal effort at highlighting Chile's emergence from dictatorship serves as the historical backdrop for Dorfman's new novel. Yet, unlike Dorfman's play, Death and the Maiden, which also addressed Chile's transition to democracy, The Nanny and the Iceberg places a traditional treatment of history in relief and accords it no more importance than cybersex. In fact, the novel is framed as an extraordinarily long E-mail message/suicide note to an Internet girlfriend.

Dorfman is a writer who excels at creating narrative worlds where previously unimaginable...