The Nanny and the Iceberg.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Review

The Nanny and the Iceberg, by Ariel Dorfman. New York: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 2000.

In his convoluted but highly entertaining new novel, Ariel Dorfman returns to his favorite subject--not sex, as the suggestive cover and buildings-roman format might lead you to believe, but the author's native Chile. Composed as a long suicide note from a young Chilean, Gabriel McKenzie, to an American friend, the novel explores the tensions between post-Pinochet Chile and the ideals of the past. Gabriel writes from Seville, where he is planning to celebrate his father's birthday by blowing up a giant iceberg being displayed by the Chilean government at the World's Fair, and himself, his father, and his father's best friend along with it.

Gabriel is conceived in October 1967, just as Che Guevara is being buried. The next day Cristobal McKenzie and his best friend, Pablo Baron, both born on the same day, make an outrageous bet. With Cris's brother Pancho as the only witness, Cris wagers that he will make love with a woman every night until his fiftieth birthday in 1992, never sleeping with the same woman twice except his wife, Milagros, while Pablo bets that by then, he will be the most powerful man in Chile. When Pinochet comes to power, Milagros and her son, Gabriel, go into exile in New York. Cris stays in Santiago operating a detective service that retrieves runaway boys. Pablo and Pancho work for the overthrow of Pinochet.

Raised with stories of Cris's extraordinary sexual prowess, Gabriel grows up feeling inadequate. He believes he will be unable to divest himself of his virginity until he confronts his father, but Milagros refuses to return to Santiago until democracy has been reestablished. A sixties leftist, she has tried to instill her values in her son, but Gabriel is more interested in sex than the fatherland. In 1991, he is twenty-three years old, and Chile has an elected president. Now they can return home.

Both Cris and Pablo are close to complying with the terms of their wager. Cris's exploits have made him a sexual legend, while Pablo is an important minister in the Aylwin government--a position he achieved by declining to prosecute Pinochet's officials. Uncle Pancho, who refused to compromise his ideals, languishes in jail. At the moment, Pablo's primary concern is securing and transporting the iceberg, a feat that will establish Chile as an innovative, technologically advanced country. However, someone is threatening to blow it up...