The coat

A moving and illuminating book about grief

By the author of Ten Women and winner of the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize

«An atomic bomb has been dropped on our heads. We were always five sisters. Our fanatical identity has been irreversibly broken.»

In November 2017, after years of ups and downs, cancer ended the life of journalist Margarita Serrano. Devastated, her sister Marcela found in rural retreat and writing the only way to cope with the bewilderment, sadness, and rage.

That state of emotional exception is what underpins these pages, which, as the days passed, the author wove like a mantle to cover her sister and those left exposed after her death. The result of that boldness are the exciting, sad, and at the same time illuminating notes - discontinuous like grief itself - that Marcela Serrano gathered with lucidity and courage throughout the year that followed the death of "la M," a year that involved much confinement and memories, some music, and no self-pity. El manto is her most personal book.

Critics have said:
«A book born from heartbreak, with a still bleeding wound, with guts and heart at the same time. The result is a beautiful and lucid work about loss, in which there is also room for hope.»
Ascensión Rivas, El Cultural

«A work of mourning, reflection, and remembrance. [...] Honest and excellent pages, in which the renunciation of literary imposture does not prevent, however, the emergence of distinct and valuable tonal registers, from the narrative to the descriptive, from the evocative to the confessional.»
Iñkai Ezkerra, El Diario Vasco

«She facing writing, alone. The most personal of [her] works.»
Núria Escur, La Vanguardia

«A book that accompanies you.»
Excelsior

«An album of memories, where pain coexists with festive moments and literary references.»
Milenio

«A personal and family journey that traverses the history of Chile.»
La Tercera

«Marcela Serrano is an heiress of Scheherazade... Thanks to writers like Marcela, life will never have its last word.»
Carlos Fuentes

«Her ideals and heart are furnished with a firmness capable of avoiding all contradictions.»
Ángela López, El Mundo

«As in other novels by the Chilean writer, the primary interest lies in the creation of female characters, meticulously and balancedly delineated.»
Ricardo Senabre, El Cultural

«One of the most recognized writers in the Spanish language.»
Diego Garzón, Semana

«In the Hispanic American literary world, the Chilean Marcela Serrano is one of the writers who best knows how to address female themes.»
La Nación