The Cracks We Bear
by Catalina Infante, translated by Michelle Mirabella
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Pub Date Nov 04 2025 | Archive Date Nov 04 2025
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Description
Instead of joy, she feels fear, and then anger at her own late mother for her absence. The Cracks We Bear opens as a story about new motherhood. Soon, however, it reveals itself to be an exploration of memory and trauma as Laura starts to recall her childhood in Chile. Born in exile to staunchly communist parents, she returns to Chile with her mother after the collapse of the Pinochet dictatorship. In the fledgling democracy she grows up in, topics of capitalism and communism are ever present. Laura’s reflections, born from personal experience, are interwoven with raw and honest memories of her family life. Borrowing elements from the Bildungsroman, and pulling from the Latin American short story tradition, Catalina Infante recounts Laura’s past in vignettes. Piece by piece, the short chapters come together like a reconstructed vase, bearing its cracks.
Advance Praise
Praise for The Cracks We Bear
“Reflective, sensitive, and often moving, Catalina Infante’s first novel revolves around a mother-daughter relationship, its silences, distances, and cracks.” —La Tercera
“A poignant story, full of touching moments that approach motherhood from a more human perspective. It addresses the fears, exhaustion, and disappointment of first-time mothers who feel suffocated by overwhelming social mandates. Catalina Infante constructs a vision of motherhood that is terrifying, and describes a facet of motherhood that is not portrayed in magazines, TV shows, or movies.” —Infobae
“A literary composition somewhere between a confessional diary and a costumbrista’s work that portrays society with some sarcasm, but also with the necessary dose of tenderness and hope. The author outlines, with a beautifully feminine intimacy, the shaken Chile of the last 30 year. The novel gives voice to an uprooted Chilean daughter of political exiles, in search of her own intimate identity, in a country that was foreign to her from the very moment of her birth.” —Cine y literatura
“A very personal, intimate book that explores longings, doubts, tiredness, and social pressures connected to motherhood, and the need to return to normality, to recover oneself, one’s own body.” —Bio Bio Chile
“Catalina Infante writes with empathy about loneliness, grief, fears, exile, motherhood, and the relationship of mothers with feminism.” —Culturizarte
“When her daughter Antonia is born, Laura thinks of Esther, her mother. A mother who was not especially loving, who thought the best inheritance was a good education. A mother with whom Laura had may differences, and who died from cancer when she was 18. Laura finds photos and postcards that Esther never sent; she relives vague and elusive moments in her memory, and discovers that she did not know the woman who lived in her mother.” —La Tercera
“The Cracks We Bear is a ‘real,’ concrete, human story full of small details … a story about being a daughter, and a mother, in a society that idealizes motherhood.” —Futuro
Marketing Plan
- Set in Chile in the late 20th century, The Cracks We Bear explores first-time motherhood, generational trauma, childhood memories and grief over the loss of a mother.
- As Laura holds her newborn daughter, she’s afraid, and angry at her late mother for not being there. Setting the theme before the reader even turns to page one is the novel’s epigraph from Gabriela Mistral’s essay “Gabriela thinks about her absent mother.”
- The story weaves through Chile, France, and Cuba
- Offers social and political critique of a Chilean social group known as the red set, with its Frenchified schools and its idealization of Cuba as a tourist paradise
- The loss of meaning in Chile in the 1990s is central to the story, which demonstrates a brutal change in two generations: the political activism of a generation of parents, and their content and complacent children
- Laura describes her relationships as full of cracks, cracks in the form of class and generational differences, paternal abandonment, sexual abuse, illness, marital strife, ideological tensions, and a crack that is irreparable: her mother’s death
- For readers of Rachel Cusk’s 2003 memoir A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother, and writings about motherhood out of Latin America like Jazmina Barrera’s 2022 memoir Linea Nigra, and Guadalupe Nettle’s Stillborn
- The author, born in exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, now owns the bookstore Librería Catalonia in Chile.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781642861594 |
| PRICE | $19.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 118 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Kelly P, Reviewer
An excellent story that looks at the complexities of motherhood. The book tugs at your heart and details love, loss, grief, hope, and many more aspects of the life of a mom. I enjoyed the writing and translation. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
Sharmeen R, Reviewer
The book revolves around Laura who has recently given birth, and as she starts this journey she yearns to share this experience with her mother who passed away from cancer years ago. Thus begins an exploration of what it means to be a mother and a daughter, and what motherhood had been for her own mother. With pieces of narrators childhood and current struggles we begin to piece together a narrative and work with her to answer who really was Laura's mother beyond motherhood?
A quite reflection and a reminder of valuing our parents, and having the courage to ask for their stories before it is too late and not knowing haunts us.
Caitlyn L, Reviewer
3.75 stars
Laura has recently given birth to her first child and is feeling disenchanted by motherhood. Her anger and anxiety is compounded by memories of her own late mother and the strained relationship between the two of them before her death. The Cracks We Bear explore's women's roles as mothers and daughters, and how these intersect. Laura needs to confront the trauma she has been carrying with her in order to break the cycle of abuse and neglect for her own daughter.
This is a very short read, and the author does a fantastic job of making sure the reader knows who Laura is within a few pages. I think most mothers will really resonate with how Laura feels during the newborn trenches, myself included. This includes feeling overwhelmed by but unable to be separated from your child, not recognising your body after birth, and a general feeling of isolation. Laura's mother is remembered as cold and all-powerful, even as she succumbed to cancer. Laura's inability to connect on an emotional level with her mother has left her with with a lot of unresolved grief that she doesn't know what to do with because vulnerability was never modelled in her family. Catalina's writing is so raw and relatable, I truly didn't want this to end.
I personally really connected with and enjoyed the present storyline of Laura's experience of motherhood a lot more out of the two so I wish this was explored more, especially considering it didn't really feel like a resolution was offered despite Laura's soul searching. I'm honestly disappointed this is only a novella because I think there was a lot of room for development that we didn't get.
Overall, this is a great example of dual timelines in literary fiction and I think it'll be a big hit for a lot of women.
Calzean J, Reviewer
Laura was hoping to have the perfect birth but nature doesn't always go to plan. She grapples with her role as a mother, with a child that does not sleep well, her changed body and her isolation from her friends. She also has a great many unresolved issues with her own, now dead, mother.
We get to see a little of Laura's life and the traumas she suffered. As well as the frustrations of a fretful baby who seems to behave with the mother in law, and a husband who has to leave and go back to his own mother for a while. Men do not feature well in this book.
It's a book which could have explored more but seems to also be the right length. I certainly felt I knew Laura and had hopes she would break from the shackles of her mother-issues.
Sterre A, Reviewer
The Cracks We Bear tells the story of Laura, mother to a newborn and daughter to Esther, her mother who passed away of cancer. In the chaos of her newly found motherhood — which is vastly different from her expectations — Laura looks back upon her own childhood and the turbulent relationship with her mother.
This novel is short, just over 100 pages, but still manages to encapsulate the bond between mother and daughter exceptionally well. I felt like I got very close to Laura in a very short time. It highlights the hardships of motherhood while including the breaking of a generational cycle. A short but strong read!
The_Secret_Bookreview ., Reviewer
This hauntingly beautiful book first caught my attention with its striking cover — bold, delicate, and impossible to ignore. It perfectly mirrors the emotional depth of the story within.
The Cracks We Bear begins with a raw and honest portrayal of new motherhood, capturing the fear, fragility, and overwhelming emotion of Laura as she holds her newborn.
But this is only the beginning. What follows is a powerful exploration of memory, inherited trauma, and identity as Laura reflects on her childhood in post-dictatorship Chile.
Told in lyrical, vignette-style chapters, the book reads like a mosaic of memory — fractured, tender, and deeply personal. Catalina Infante Beovic’s writing is intimate and unflinching, blending political history with emotional truth in a way that lingers long after the final page.
Quietly powerful and beautifully written.
Read more at The Secret Book Review.
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