Come Together, Fall Apart
A Novella and Stories

This is the prototypical first book by an MFA graduate. It’s well-written in a technical sense, with smooth, polished prose and pacing, clear themes, and the right characters in the right places. But it isn’t affecting; it’s pleasant, but forgettable. This volume contains 8 short stories, of around 2......more

After loving Cristina Henriquez’s novel, The Book of Unknown Americans (Knopf, 2014), I was thrilled to discover her short story collection, Come Together, Fall Apart (2006). The novella and eight short stories take place in Panama during the late 1980s when the country was experiencing unrest and in......more

Hard to believe that this was the first contemporary literary fiction I've read set in modern day Panama. Such a treat to see the story of my mother's home country told like this, to see the place I spent many summers of my childhood written about with such attention, love, and care. The city of PTY......more

Part of the reason I love Hispanic authors so much is that their novels seem like cultural examples of my Latina heritage; I feel closer to the half of my family that lives in Panama. However, Cristina Henriquez wrote this book of short stories that take place specifically in Panama. I've never read......more

ah, good not great. i liked the first two short stories though, cute lil doomed romances ☠️ all the stories were connected in tiny ways making panama seem like home despite the invasion in the foreground of the title novella.......more