Halsey Street

After spending five years in Pittsburgh, substitute art teacher Penelope Grand returns to Halsey Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. With her mother gone back to the Dominican Republic, Penelope returns to take care of her father who was injured in a fall. Wanting her own place, she rents the room in the attic of a brownstone of one the white families who has moved to a rapidly gentrifying area. Alternating between the points of view of Penelope and her mother Mirella, this books explores themes of forgiveness and family.This book has so much to admire. The writing is excellent with a very detailed prose evoking the time and place of the characters. While I could see everything vividly in my mind’s eye, the prose was very dense without advancing the plot or developing the characters. Through the book I found the characters emotionless, especially Penelope, and I didn’t understand their motives. I wanted this book to say more about art, but it’s tangential thread through the novel. I was hoping this book explored more of the gentrification and changes in Brooklyn and New York City. A main character who is half black and half Dominican is very interesting, but I never understood her actions. I found both Penelope and Mirella unlikeable for different reason. Penelope was quite bad to everyone in the novel except the little girl, Grace. I just wanted her to see a therapist the whole time. I thought the book was quite good and an enjoyable read, but I didn’t feel a connection to Penelope which mad the ending feel flat.

Interesting read

Naima Coster's Halsey Street is an enticing novel that is worth spending your time and money on. Her characters are so real, so nuanced that you want to hate them, encourage them, yell at them, and hope for them. It is the kind of story that will make you FEEL, and most readers will relate to some of the characters' darkest feelings and thoughts even if they'd never admit so aloud.Grounded in gentrified Brooklyn, the novel primarily alternates between DR and NYC as well as between the female protagonists' points of view, to tell the story of a fractured family, the difficult relationships between mother, daughter, and father. It is a haunting reminder of how the trauma of personal tragedies, such as a loved one's death, and shared loss, such as gentrification and poverty, can pass through generations of a family. The author paints a vivid picture of the human consequences of trauma--depression, alcoholism, adultery, self-harm, and more. It is clear to see how such trauma leads to several of the characters' poor decisions as parents, spouses/lovers, and children.What I like most about Halsey Street is that the novel calls into the question the idea of the American Dream, sharing overlapping stories of how parents of color can work hard to claim roots in New York City but can quickly lose everything they toiled for when richer people take an interest in their homes, their businesses, and their neighborhoods and steal it away from them. The book presents a story about lives that are, in and of themselves, intersections between countries, races, ethnicities, languages, and socioeconomic classes and accurately explores how challenging it is to be the person who straddles all those conflicting worlds.Contrary to what another reviewer states, the author thoughtfully incorporates bits of Spanish into the dialogue in a way that is authentic (and easily translated online for those who do not speak the language.) Including Spanish phrases enhances Coster's examination of language as a tool and a hurdle, of how difficult it can be for family members to communicate with one another when they cannot find the right words to express their true meaning, how foreign one can feel in their own home.Full of grit and yearning, Halsey Street paints a somber portrait of a young woman seeking freedom and the long, rocky road she must travel to get there.

It is fitting that I binge-read Halsey Street the same weekend that I binge-watched She's Gotta Have It, the Spike Lee-directed television series based on his film from the 1980s. Both feature black millennial women stumbling as they try to figure out the direction of their professional and personal lives, against the backdrop of gentrifying Brooklyn. Nola Darling and Penelope Grand are both complex characters—at times incredibly frustrating, often very relatable, and ultimately deeply flawed (i.e., human).What spoke to me most about this novel is the deep sense of place: Brooklyn is vibrant and dynamic, a character in its own right that means different things to each person who encounters it. Like Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn, this book was transportive in the way all good stories are.In addition, I thought the development of the family dynamics at the center of this story, especially the painful, complicated mother-daughter relationship between Penelope and Mirella, was skillfully done. I've read few books that focus on the internal life of a mother, particularly a mother like Mirella who chooses her own freedom and (sort of?) happiness over her husband and daughter. Generally, I don't like when novels switch character perspectives, but here it felt right and necessary. We needed Mirella's point of view and voice in order to empathize with her and understand her. My one critique of this book is that the ending of the Mirella-Penelope relationship felt somewhat unsatisfying. I think I wanted more closure, but I guess it is realistic that you don't always get it.I really enjoyed Halsey Street. It is not a plot-driven page-turner, but it is introspective and empathetic, in addition to being beautifully and assuredly written. I look forward to reading whatever Coster comes up with next.

I applaud the author for her debut novel and she has a promising future as an author. I am fluent in Spanish so had no trouble translating the phrases and the words in the book which are in Spanish. However many readers are not fluent in Spanish so I think she should have included a glossary providing the English translation of the words and phrases used in the book.Another reviewer wrote that she could not decide of she liked the book and I concur completely. Penelope is such a self centered individual bemoaning her upbringing and current status in life but does nothing positive to move her life forward. Both of her parents are flawed as well and don't make the reader sympathetic to anyone in the family. The only character I liked was the grandmother in the Dominican Republic whose role in the book was too short.