'Come Together, Fall Apart' by Cristina Henríquez

The prolific short-story author explores fluxus, flight, and failure in nine stories set in Panama

By Kate Rockwood
Published: June 13th, 2006 | 4:51pm

Riverhead, List Price: $24.95, 320 pages

In Come Together, Fall Apart, a collection of eight short stories and one novella, Henríquez displays a strong, sparse voice, characters that strike near-perfect pitches of vulnerability and fallibility, and just the right knack for picking details in a tale.

The stories in this collection are individually beautiful and collectively haunting. Panama plays a central part in each of the stories, but Henríquez doesn't lazily rely on Panama to carry the weight of the book. Instead, the reader experiences Panama along with each of the distinct characters, whether it be an American tourist bird watching with her distant lover, a young man coming of age during the days of the American invasion, a young girl visiting her ailing grandparents while her parents divorce in New Jersey, or a love-hungry and oft-abandoned teenager proposing marriage to her boyfriend for the 45th time to no avail. Even as chaos breaks out in Panama, Henríquez’s writing remains eloquent and subdued — one character describing the bombings in nearby neighborhoods alongside the story of his family's loss of their ancestral home and his own loss of his first love. The stories are both universal (love, loss, family, separation) and deeply specific to Panama.

Rather than lavishly relay the surroundings of each scene or feverishly try to explain each moment's cultural significance, Henríquez provides a few, telling details. For instance, the author describes the wire mesh finger gloves that one character must wear while cutting meat at work and the posture of another as she sits cross-legged by the community pool reading the newspaper for an update on the actions of the Noriega regime. The visual moments are strong enough that you'll not only see the characters but you'll also pause in your reading to savor the image.

Finishing the collection, you might not feel as drunk on the heady exoticism of Panama as a lesser writer would make you feel, but you will feel deeply touched by the lives that have been laid bare on the pages of Henríquez’s collection.