The Cracks We Bear

Praise for The Cracks We Bear

“Catalina Infante’s rich landscape of motherhood is brought to vivid life in Michelle Mirabella’s deeply poetic translation. Not a word is wasted.” -Anton Hur, judge for the 2025 International Booker Prize and author of Toward Eternity

“As a debut English-language novel for both Infante Beovic
and Mirabella, The Cracks We Bear is a resounding success. Much
can be said of the geographical and political contexts of the book. Chile
during and after the Pinochet regime, Communist Cuba, and Paris all appear
momentarily in the text but with gravitas and a Hemingway-esque significance.
Notwithstanding, The Cracks We Bear is a text that transcends
its context with character, symbolism, and themes universal. Infante Beovic is
not simply a tour guide through her identified landscapes of grief and
postpartum womanhood. Quotable lines are not commentary but exclamations and
epiphanies of a woman feeling the fractures, naming the realities, desperately
navigating those spaces for all who come along for the journey. A relevant,
rich literary statement.”–World Literature Today

“Chilean writer Infante’s penetrating English-language debut centers on a woman coping with the challenges of new motherhood while reflecting on her late mother. While her baby daughter sleeps, Laura, who has postpartum depression, goes through a box of her mother Esther’s memorabilia, “unsure of what it is I’m hoping to find.” As the novel progresses, Laura attempts to understand who Esther was before her death from cancer when Laura was 18. Cold and emotionally distant, Esther left Laura with an emptiness that’s “difficult to name… as if an organ has been removed from our bodies, leaving a hole in its place.” Told in vignettes and fragments, the narrative alternates between Laura’s distress in the early months of motherhood; trouble in her marriage to Felipe, which reaches a breaking point when she asks him to move out; and a vivid depiction of the turmoil following the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile as Laura pieces together memories from photographs. This slim and subtle work packs a stinging punch.” –Publishers Weekly

“This slim, electric novella pairs a story of new motherhood with an exploration of grief and exile. As the narrator, Laura, struggles with the reduction of her own identity in the early days of motherhood, she also grapples with the limited way she knew her own late mother. In chapters that alternate between the present and her strained memories, Laura goes in search of a more multifaceted understanding, both of her mother and of herself. The Cracks We Bear joins the ranks of several titles about early motherhood published in translation or by translators in recent years. Linea Nigra by Jazmina Barrera, translated by Christina MacSweeney; In Vitro by Isabel Zapata, translated by Robin Myers; and The Long Form by Kate Briggs have been among my favorites. The Cracks We Bear is a debut for both Mirabella and Infante; what a firecracker start to their careers.”– Words Without Borders

“A Chilean woman loses her mother, gives birth to a daughter, and attempts to understand the fragile threads that bind generations in this slim yet sturdy novel. A straightforward voice guides a complex exploration of upheaval–pol

Catalina Infante Beovic is a Chilean writer, publisher, and co-owner of Librera Catalonia in Chile. She has written three books of stories of the indigenous peoples of Chile with Sonia Montecino, anthropologist and recipient of the Chilean National Social Sciences Award. She published her first book of short stories, Todas somos una misma sombraI, in 2018, followed by her English-language debut, Ferns. Published in 2020 by World Literature Today, Ferns was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and adapted into a short film by director Paz Ramrez. Infante’s short stories and poems have appeared in World Literature Today, Columbia Journal, the HarperCollins Daughters of Latin America anthology, and the Deep Vellum Best Literary Translations anthology. The Cracks We Bear is Infante Beovic’s first full-length novel translated into English.

Michelle Mirabella is a Spanish-to-English literary translator. In addition to her translation of Catalina Infante’s debut novel, The Cracks We Bear, her work appears in the anthologies Best Literary Translations (Deep Vellum, 2024) and Daughters of Latin America (HarperCollins, 2023), as well as in venues such as World Literature Today, Latin American Literature Today, and Southwest Review.

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