Reviews
from Virgina Quarterly Review (also a powells.com "Review-a-Day" pick)
"A stunning debut collection.… Unlike so many stories set in an exotic locale, which tend to read like fictionalized guidebooks, these bring the country to life with fluency and verve.… More importantly, the stories lend fresh insight to human circumstances that transcend setting.… Breathtaking."
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from The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, May 7, 2006)
"Henríquez's fiction provides intense close-ups of young Panamanians whose lives are in enormous flux.… While her Panamanian characters are utterly convincing, her prose reads as if it grew up drinking water that had been fluoridated with traces of John Updike and Ann Beattie. Her sentences have a muted calm that suggests, paradoxically, something quite remote from inner peace: it's the state you will yourself into so you can hold on to the many disparate threads of a life. Henríquez writes without judgment—especially about the men in her stories, who, despite their frequently awful behavior, can seem unexpectedly amiable, at times even likable. Always she appears to be probing for rare moments of grace.… In Come Together, Fall Apart, Henríquez's young Panamanians press onward to find a way of transcending fate and circumstance."
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from The San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday, April 30, 2006)
"In this luminous first book of fiction, Come Together, Fall Apart, Cristina Henríquez creates a vivid portrait of Panama in transition.… Each story is full of subtle surprises and unexpected twists. Because Henríquez is such an inventive writer, the reader is never quite sure how the story will end, never certain about the fate of the characters.… The writing often shimmers and glows with a spiritual warmth.… Sometimes, too, the emotions are so unbearably poignant that one has to stop reading for a moment.… [The novella] weaves the Noriega regime, first love, friendship, familial connections, change and starting over into a radiant tale that ends the collection on an affirmative note. Although the threat of violence dogs the family, it is love—its mystery, its inscrutability—that binds the characters, and ultimately, this marvelous volume, together."
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from The Seattle Times (Sunday, April 30, 2006)
"Beautifully crafted.… All eight short stories deal with love in one form or another, but they do so without seeming sentimental or abstract. We smell the sweat, hear the noises of the city, inhale the crisp air that rises off a rare snowfall.… Only a master can carry a complex sentence as she does.… This is powerful writing."
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from The San Antonio Express-News (Sunday, April 16, 2006)
“Henríquez's prose is spare, vivid and poetic. Additionally, it offers insights into life in Panama—its diverse landscapes, culture and people. The voice in each story is tender and unyielding.”
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from Library Journal
“[A] tender collection.… The writing is pleasantly engaging but far from trite; the poignancy of many of these stories is intense, especially that of the title novella.”
from The Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Sunday, April 9, 2006)
“Henríquez shows great promise.… [She] finds the pulse of Panama without having been born there.… After reading Come Together, Fall Apart, you'd swear she had lived there her entire life.”
from Texas Monthly (April 2006 issue)
“Cristina Henríquez has assembled a heart-stopping collection of stories set in Panama in her first book, Come Together, Fall Apart. She hints at the nation’s poverty—overcrowded homes, ramshackle furniture—but doesn’t dwell on it, instead finding rich narratives in mundane events.… Henríquez’s writing is vibrant, her affecting portraits of Panama’s young women ultimately a celebration of humanity, with all its flaws.”
from Booklist (starred review)
“In eight stories and a novella, newcomer Henríquez creates a vision of Panama that is at once sweepingly realistic and subtly hallucinogenic. Water imagery abounds, and like water, these tales are transparent yet weighty, buoyant yet crushing.… In the ravishing title novella, a family faces eviction while Noriega is under siege, and the country braces for an American invasion.… Losses great and small are common currency, and yet these fluid stories abound in beauty, irony, and magic. Like Junot Diaz and Daniel Alarcón, Henríquez is an immensely gifted young writer, who evokes the spirit of a struggling land and the people who love it beyond reason.”
from Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[A] dazzling new talent.… Henríquez’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.… Stories redolent of innocent attachment tempered by obdurate experience—compassionate, tender, and fresh.”
from 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."
“ There's a restlessness to these rich and passionate stories. It's clear that they each needed to be told, and now they need to be read. Cristina Henríquez's voice feels as real as the world she writes about.”