Synopses & Reviews
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
With eight short stories and a novella that travel from dusty city streets to humid beaches, Cristina Henr quez carves out a distinctive and unforgettable vision of contemporary Panama. The stories of Come Together, Fall Apart combine to create a seamless fictional world in which the varied landscapes and shifting culture of a country in transition--and the insistent voices of its young people--are vividly represented. In "Yanina," a young man's fidelity is tested when a new living situation strains his relationship with his girlfriend. For the young woman in "Ashes," the very notion of fidelity is shattered--and her lover's philandering is only one link in a chain of traumatic events that begins with her mother's death. In "Mercury," an American girl visits her grandparents in Panama while her parents divorce at home, and attempts to connect with her ailing grandfather in broken Spanish that he'll never understand. Again and again, characters find their fates irrevocably tied to those of their families--in "Beautiful," as fortunes rise; and in "Come Together, Fall Apart," as they collapse.
These are stories of family bonds and generational conflicts, youthful infatuation and genuine passion that are tender, ambitious, and unflinching, from a bold and original young writer who is not only an accomplished prose stylist but also an irresistible storyteller.
About the Author
Cristina Henríquez is the author of
Come Together, Fall Apart: A Novella and Stories and the forthcoming novel
The World In Half. Her stories have been published in
The New Yorker,
Glimmer Train,
Ploughshares,
TriQuarterly, and
AGNI, and her non-fiction has appeared in
The New Yorker,
The Oxford American, and
Preservation. She was featured in
Virginia Quarterly Review as one of "Fiction's New Luminaries," and is a recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award, a grant started by Sandra Cisneros in honor of her father.
She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives with her husband in Chicago.