The Cracks We Bear, a raw, spare novel sparked by new motherhood, marks a joint English-language debut for Chilean author/publisher Catalina Infante Beovic and translator Michelle Mirabella, who previously translated Infante Beovic's short stories.
Laura birthed Antonia with "animalistic screams," irrevocably altering their lives forever. What Laura wanted most to have during the delivery was her mother Esther's Santa Teresa medal, which Esther would "always put on when she was afraid to face things." But the medal is lost, and Esther long dead. "You don't just miss a mother who dies; it's another emotion, difficult to name," Laura muses. "Perhaps there's a word for it in another language, a grouping of letters whose sound can hold such emptiness. We just learn to live like this, half broken."
Without her own mother, Laura's journey into parenthood feels like a dark enigma--"What do I know about being a mother?" Antonia overwhelms Laura: "I can't do this... I don't want to be a mom." Laura was just 18 when Esther died, their relationship complicated and painful in life. "You were born into privilege, Laura, you have no idea what it is to suffer," Esther insisted. She'd been exiled from her native Chile because of Laura's father, Michel, "a revolutionary snob" who dragged her to Cuba, then France, where Laura was born. Michel "lost his mind," and Esther returned to Chile with Laura, placing her in a French private school where Esther taught. Esther "remained silent" while Camilo, Esther's parasitic half-brother, abused Laura since she was nine. As Esther lay in hospital, Laura had her first sexual experience--marked with purpling, bruised violence. Esther died days later.
As Laura embraces Antonia, she realizes about Esther, "trying to understand who you were, what we were" will always be intertwined with her own experience of motherhood. Laura's "therapist says relationships are full of cracks, that they're... these ordinary earthen jugs that have been pieced back together over and over again." Infante Beovic illuminates these cracks with longing and loneliness, exhaustion and first smiles ("without yet knowing what it means to smile"). Her sharp insights are revelatory, reframing an "irrefutable," joyful photograph as evidence that mother and daughter face a coming rift.
Mirabella's translator's note adds her own transformative experience with The Cracks We Bear, which she first read in 2022 "as a daughter" and finished translating as a mother, having since had her own daughter. With empathic perception, author and translator present a nuanced, haunting journey of new (and old) motherhood. --Terry Hong
Shelf Talker: Chilean author Carlina Infante Beovic's penetrating English-language debut sharply examines the overwhelming challenges of new motherhood haunted by the complications of painful daughterhood.