American Fiction, Short Story Collections (Single Author), Hispanic Americans - Fiction & Literature

Come Together, Fall Apart

Name: Come Together, Fall Apart
Author: Cristina Henriquez
ISBN: 9781594482410

by Cristina Henriquez

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Overview

These eight short stories and novella travel from Panama's dusty city streets to its humid beaches to create an affecting portrait of a country in transition. They illustrate family bonds and generational conflicts, youthful infatuation and genuine passion. Tender, ambitious, bold, and unflinching, they herald the arrival of a fresh, exciting, and lavishly talented new voice in American literature.

Synopsis

Publishers Weekly

The characters in this eloquent, muted debut collection of eight stories plus the title novella are eager to enjoy life, though thwarted by the inimical conditions of a Panama in transition after the collapse of Noriega's rule. The young couple in the first story, "Yanina," embody a sweetly turbulent and conflicted relationship: the title character, wounded by the marital infidelity of her father and later of her godfather, asks her well-meaning but still uncertain boyfriend, Ren , to marry her 45 times. "Ashes," which first appeared in The New Yorker, tracks the unraveling effects of a mother's death on her daughter, Mireya, already adrift in troubled relationships and endangered by her arduous job as a meat cutter. Characters reel from family rupture and dysfunction: the teenaged Maria in "Mercury," for example, is torn between her home in New Jersey, where her parents are divorcing, and Panama City, where she is sent to visit aging grandparents she wants desperately to impress with her Spanish. The eponymous final novella, set in late 1989 on the eve of the American invasion of Panama, affectingly reveals a country "teetering on the edge of a cliff" through the fate of a family forced to leave their ancestral Panama City home. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

About the Author, Cristina Henriquez

Cristina Henr'quez's stories have been published in The New Yorker, Glimmer Train, TriQuarterly, and AGNI. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Henriquez offers a tender collection of short stories and a novella set in Panama around the time of the military leader Noriega's fall. The writing is pleasantly engaging but far from trite; throughout, the characters confront significant life issues like marriage, coming of age, independence, divorce, job tedium, drug addiction, and incest while struggling with political upheaval, generational conflict, and personal ambitions and desires. Through vividly evoked landscapes, neighborhoods, and families, Henriquez reveals the consequences of a mother's death ("Ashes"), a father's infidelity ("Come Together, Fall Apart"), or a couple's divorce ("Mercury"). The poignancy of many of these stories is intense, especially that of the title novella. Recommended for all collections.-Sofia A. Tangalos, SUNY at Buffalo Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Eight stories and a novella set in Panama introduce a dazzling new talent. Henr'quez's voice is artfully simple and unembellished, soft yet quietly piercing. Her tales record realizations of separateness, moments of empowerment, acknowledgements of powerful family bonds. These emotional truths and insights are often experienced by young women, several with absent fathers. In "Ashes," the endurance of a mother's love is all that remains to Mireya, whose job has ended and whose boyfriend has deceived her. In "The Wide Pale Ocean," Ysabel's first taste of romance only reinforces her closeness to the mother who has brought her up alone, having gotten pregnant after a one-night stand. Many of the men here are unreliable, offering sex and the promise of caring, but then bringing disappointment, and sometimes worse. Yanina, in a story named after her, repeatedly asks Rene to marry her, but he can't quite commit. "Beautiful" sees an errant father returning home, only to abuse his daughter Rosaria, who finds a way to expose his deeds and reclaim herself. Panama colors each story differently: in its dripping forests, tropical valleys, religious processions, teeming streets. Jobs come and go; electrical appliances are hard to sell; snow falls like a miracle. Two stories, "The Box House and the Snow" and "Chasing Birds," are set outside urban terrain and lack of conviction. The title novella is the only piece with overt political references-to street violence, the American invasion and Noriega's surrender-which are mirrored in the story of a family dispossessed of its home and that of a young boy who learns hard lessons of the heart. Stories redolent of innocent attachment tempered by obdurateexperience-compassionate, tender and fresh.