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.

Halsey Street Naima Coster LIttle A, Jan 2018 331 pages, ebook. Hardcover, audiobook, MP3 CD, MP3 Audio Women’s Lit, Debut Novel ✭✭✭✭✭ I was provided an ARC of this book by Little A and NetGalley. This is my honest review for which I receive no compensation of any kind. The cover is very appealing. It caught my eye with its wonderful red house, yellow-lit window and single figure in front. The story is a familiar one of what happens to the child when parents split up and she’s left to live her own life in between. The characters were wonderfully drawn so that you could really see them living their lives. Some you sympathized with and others you didn’t. The pace was the pace of life with events that took their time and events that didn’t, so the tension was sometimes low-key and sometimes screaming in your ears or pounding on the door. This is a debut novel which seems to guarantee that the author will get at least one more chance to sell her work. This was outstanding and I will definitely buy her next book. And here begins the reveal… Penelope Grand is living in Pittsburgh when she gets a letter from her father’s neighbor that he has taken a fall and is not doing very well. He’s not taking care of himself and needs help. So Penny moves back to Brooklyn to help her father. But she refuses to move back into the old family home where he lives, in spite of the fact that there is plenty of room. She refuses to go backward in her life, she will only go forwards even in Brooklyn. Does that sound like justification to you? Twisted logic? A very mixed up young woman? Penny rents a third-floor attic room with the Harpers and takes a job as a substitute art teacher, for which she really is not qualified but she figures she can fake it. What does it take to do art with elementary children? She actually is an artist herself and does quite well with the children. It helps her bring her own art back to life some. Penny goes to see her father daily and tries to get him to move down to the first floor of the big house, but he is stubborn and is determined to remain up on the second floor where he has always been. She is just as stubborn about not living there. I think if she had been willing to move into the house, he would have been willing to meet her halfway in her demands. But these two stubborn people just couldn’t give in to each other in any way. So the very friendly neighbor lady visits Ralph and feeds him a lot of the time and keeps him company while Penny is busy living her new life in Brooklyn. But Ralph wants Penny to have the house eventually. He’s signed the papers, but they also need the signature of Mirella Grand, Penny’s mother. Mirella left one night when Penny was a child and hasn’t been heard from since as far as Penny knows. She’s gotten to know her landlords a bit more. Samantha is a lawyer and works long hours in an office in the city. Marcus is an architect and works at home quite a bit. Grace is their little girl who is lonely. They have only recently moved into the house since it was completely renovated for them. Grace hasn’t had enough time to make friends in this area yet. She’s not allowed to play outside since it could be dangerous. But she makes friends with Penny very quickly. They do a lot of talking and Samantha asks Penny to watch Grace from time to time when neither she nor Marcus can be home. It’s good for both Penny and Grace to talk. Penny sees the innocence of Grace and treasures it. Grace is shown a bigger world than the one she has and gets some of her questions about life answered in a realistic way. Penny gets a postcard from her mother asking her to visit her in the Dominican Republic where she has made her home. At first, Penny doesn’t want to go, but Ralph convinces her that she should. She needs to understand why her mother left and see what sort of life she has made for herself in the DR. So Penny flies to the DR and is met by her mother, who looks wonderful. She’s been living a life that obviously agrees with her. She has bought herself a house and made it a home, which she is very proud to show to Penny. She is ready to try to explain to Penny why she had to leave all those years ago. Why she could no longer live with Ralph. Mirella and Penny spent time getting to know one another again. Mirella tells Penny that her house will be Penny’s when Mirella is dead. Penny has brought the papers for Ralph’s house for Mirella to sign also. Mirella signs the papers. Penny goes back to Brooklyn and her life. Mirella misses her greatly. Ralph has taken a fall and is recovering in a nursing home, so Penny is no longer responsible for him. His doctor, Dr. Elias, tells Penny that Ralph is not taking care of himself and that he will be better off in the nursing home with constant care. Ralph and Penny argue about why he’s not taking care of himself and their fight goes too far. They have both said too much. Penny returns home to the Harper’s house one night in the snow, which is turning into a blizzard, to find Marcus working in his office with the door open. They’ve gotten to be friends over time. Samantha is spending the night at her office because of the storm. Grace is downstairs in her room all set for the night. Penny tempts Marcus and he has no will. He gives in to her faster than Adam gave in to Eve. They carry on for two days and nights while Samantha is snowed in at the office. The storm has ended and the streets are cleared. Samantha is home from the office and the air is thick with the suspicion of betrayal. Marcus has decided to try one more time with his wife. He cuts Penny cold. Penny is still very close to Grace. One night Penny comes home to find Grace the only one home. Her parents are both out with the understanding that Penny would be home soon and would see to Grace. Penny is a bit miffed about this. Grace is really bored and she convinces Penny to take her for a walk. They take the A train and walk around part of the city to the Brooklyn Bridge. Penny acts as her tour guide and shows her different places in the city, the place where the World Trade Center had been and other places. They stopped to get tea and watch people being people. When they get home, Samantha is in a tear. She’s ready to terminate Penny’s lease and put her daughter back in her plastic bubble. Penny finds some relief in talking with Jon, the bartender at the Sheckley, one of the few old businesses still around in the old neighborhood. Jon is also a street artist, and he takes her with him one night to try his brand of art. He had also helped her move her things into the rooms on the bottom floor of the Halsey Street house and repaint the rooms she was using. He listens to what and how she talks about what’s going on. He doesn’t necessarily agree with her point of view on all these things or that what she has done is right. She gets aggravated with him. Then she gets a phone call that has her visiting her father in the nursing home. Mirella has died in an accident. Her ashes are sitting in her house waiting to be taken care of. Ralph responds by getting on a plane with his daughter and flying to the DR. Something he has never done in his life. But this was his wife and this is his duty to attend to. Penny painted a picture for her mother to commemorate her house that she was so proud of and takes it with her to the DR. Penny and Ralph bond through this last service to Mirella and music. I have left out a major factor in this whole story and that’s the backstory of it. But to go into that would take a whole lot of time. I didn’t want to do that. The backstory, of course, ties things together and explains a lot of things. I have simply told you what happens to this very angry young woman. This is an amazing and emotion prompting story of one young woman’s search for her place in life. She could be any young woman. I strongly recommend reading this book. It will be one that you think about picking up for a reread in time, I believe. This is a debut novel and I look forward to seeing what else this author produces. Highly recommended.

Having read other people's reviews of this book, I agree with those who say that the main characters are selfish and lacking in awareness of other people's humanity. Penelope uses other people without regard to their feelings and casts them off when she no longer is getting whatever it is she wanted from them. She no sooner meets the family she is renting from than she begins to size up the husband as a possible bed mate, writes off the wife/mother as 'the landlady ' and starts to form a bond with their little girl without regard to the effect her subsequent adultery might have on the child or parents. But they are just well-to-do white people, so why worry? She has already been shown picking up a somewhat naive white 'boy' (grad student), taking him to bed and then showing her scorn for him as she walks out.(Being white, black or brown is really important to Penelope.) Penelope is a teacher who cares nothing about teaching and little about her students. She often treats the kindness of others with contempt. She is prone to sudden hissy fits and outbursts of rudeness that she seems to take satisfaction in. Running, drinking, drawing - these absorb her to the exclusion of almost everything else. Although she seems to begin to find herself as an artist at the end of the book, the major flaws in her character go pretty much unexamined. The most likable of Penelope's family, perhaps excepting her deceased grandmother, is her father, Ralph, with whom Penelope has always had a good relationship. She has had a difficult relationship with Mirella, her mother, and has pretty much written her off after Mirella left Ralph and returned to the Dominican Republic where she was born. Neither Ralph nor Penelope seems to have a clue as to why Mirella left, or bothers to ask her. The author does not emphasize Mirella's reasons, although they are subtly sketched in: through the couple's years together, Ralph has never really included is wife in the parts of his life that mean the most - his beloved music store and his circle of (male) friends. Mirella would have been glad to work in the music store with him, but he won't allow it; instead, she works for years cleaning houses for white ladies. She is almost invisible in her own little family circle. It's Ralph, Penelope, and The Store that matter - not her. The author seems aware, to an extent, of the flaws of her protagonist, less so of Ralph, and more so of Mirella. I feel that Mirella deserved a fuller development, showing more of her own feelings of being shut out by her husband and never at home even in the village where she grew up. Are we to excuse Penelope's selfishness on grounds that she is 'an artist' and artists (stereotypically?) drink too much, have casual sexual relationships, and are more into their own 'thing' than less talented people? Or that she never got the kind of love she wanted from her mother? Or that at age 30 she is pretty emotionally immature and lacking in awareness of other people's complexity? I found this book worth reading. The language and style are memorable, as are the characters. I wished for the author to somehow reveal a broader and deeper understanding of the complexity of the various characters, especially the ones less central to Penelope's point of view - not that they be developed as a more important part of the story, but that, at least, they be shown as something more 'human' than Penelope thought them to be.

Halsey Street is a beautifully written book about a woman who returns home to care for an invalid father, and their striving to come to terms with their family’s past and a presently changing environment. It is filled with descriptions so rich and fresh that the author makes the people and places come alive. The main setting is regentrifying Brooklyn, NY, while the Dominican Republic is the secondary setting. The setting provides an allegory for the exclusion and isolation suffered by the characters. The book’s emotional grimness made reading it a chore in spots, but the author’s wonderful writing propels a reader to persevere. The ending is not a fairytale, but it fits. One wishes for the characters that they had only done many years ago what they finally do at the end of the book, as their lives could have turned out so much better! A general theme is the struggle with displacement. The book’s backdrop is a generation of Brooklyn inhabitants, mostly minority working class and small business owners who rent rather than own, being shoved out of their neighborhood by newcomers. The family members suffer individual displacement. The father, Ralph, was pushed out of his record store by a more competitive rental market. Ralph excluded the mother, Mirella, from taking part in the business he loved passionately, and she was excluded again by the family as she became the “third wheel”, with Ralph and daughter Penelope developing a closer bond. As a girl, Mirella’s family had been shoved out of their home when her father died bankrupt. An immigrant, Mirella is already socially isolated. Ralph and Mirella exclude Penelope from much of their daily lives as she grows up. Resentments between Mirella and Penelope cause Mirella to shove her slacker daughter out of the home. Ralph’s depression in retirement still permits little room for Mirella in his daily life; no longer being able to stand a life of isolation, Mirella returns to her home country and uses her savings to craft a good life of her own choosing. Ralph’s stubbornness inhibits Penelope from moving in with him upon her return to New York. Penelope’s gentrified landlord and his wife kick her out of her apartment once her presence becomes inconvenient. Eventually, the Penelope seeks to shove the Mirella off of the deed to the family house. Lots of exclusion to go around in this book. Protagonist Penelope has an angry and hateful personality, quite dislikable . The author’s skillful writing is what keeps the reader from abandoning Penelope. Because Ralph and Mirella suffered traumatic loss as children, a reader can understand their personalities . The reason for Penelope’s unpleasant personality is harder to discern. The distant and withholding traits of Mirella, so resented by Penelope, are traits she actually comes to share with her over time. The author gradually reveals through flashbacks that Penelope’s parents shared little of themselves with her to the point of neglect. Social isolation at art school causes her to withdraw. Despite finishing college elsewhere, Penelope “fails to launch”, never expanding the scope of her artistic talent. This neglect of her talent diminishes her self-worth, as Penelope tells herself she doesn’t care. As an adult with no friends or friendship skills, she uses people; men for hookups, her father’s neighbor as a caretaker for the father. She views her students, her boss and her coworkers with a disinterest and a disdain which mask the pain of not knowing how to make genuine relationships, esp with a new man in her life and his friends. She is sincerely kind only with Grace, her landlord’s little daughter. Only at the very end of the book does tragedy propel Penelope to embrace her potential as an artist and to yield a bit as a person. Regrettably the theme of gentrification is appropriated and presented in purely racial terms in this book, as gentrification is a process which has impacted persons of all races and ethnicities in many cities. However it appears that in Brooklyn “white people” compose the main body of new invaders, so this viewpoint makes sense. Penelope sees everybody in racial terms. By contrast, the obnoxious friend of the landlord hails Penelope as a fellow elitist without regard to race, as she is an artist and part of the “creative class” who he assumes should appreciate the upscaling of the neighborhood. However you feel about the racial tone, Coster is spot on in her representation of the smugly superior, elitist, arrogant sense of entitlement which her gentrificators exhibit, especially as portrayed by the landlord’s friend. The community garden-restoring landlord himself embodies the insufferable self-importance of those who institutionally preserve a speck of a place whilst the rest rapidly transforms into something unrecognizable. All in all, Penelope’s frustration with a home town being changed all around her is relatable, as neither she nor the other oldtimers have control over these changes. I liked the book, and I look forward to what this author writes in the future.

I thought this was movingly, intimately written. There is something incredibly honest about Penelope- she doesn't feel like a composite character, she doesn't feel crowdsourced to appeal to readers like me (black, NYC-dwelling, voracious consumer of books by and about black women). She also doesn't feel manufactured as a tour guide into blackness for nonblack readers. She feels real. I am not this girl, but I know this girl. Speaking of which, I ended up really appreciating how this book isn't especially funny. I usually go for humor, wryness, and sillyness in my fiction, but because the main character and her circumstances felt so raw and real, the lack of humor felt appropriate. This is exactly the kind of person who would be in her head a lot, and yeah, maybe a little humorless. Processing, hurting, wanting, waiting. What that does is it lets us live in the headspace of quiet people, which is such a joy as a reader. I also love how so many characters in this book are kind of quiet, so you get all these beautiful, generous moments in this book where you have two people being silent together, sharing a house in separate rooms, sharing a bed. It's something writing is able to give a story that film or TV never can, and I always appreciate when it's well-done, like it is here. It's also full of ambivalence about one's family, which can be such a deeply shared experience but one often hidden in shame. We hear a lot about loving our family, hating them, blaming them, but not about feeling indifferent at times, vacillating between feeling genuinely responsible and feeling genuinely burdened. Especially with stories of immigrant kids like myself, we hear a lot about feeling feeling torn between two places, but that's only part of the story, there's also a deep ambivalence about both places, and the relationships they embody. The uncertainty Penelope feels about her parents, and about the neighborhood she's from, are really appreciated, especially when such ambivalence is often viewed as unacceptable in conversations about gentrification and family. The book is also, obviously, full of deeply felt observations about Brooklyn, where it's been, where it is now (or at least, where it was about 10-15 years ago, when this book is set). I know New York, but I don't know this story, and the melancholy, the conflictedness, the suspicion, and the isolation of the gentrification story are all sorely needed as my generation is forced to contend with what they did to Brooklyn, and why they were able to do it so fast. SUCH a different story, a ton to think about after, I think this is definitely a must-read.

Halsey Street is the story of a family love triangle between a father, mother and daughter. Not in a weird way. Mirella, the mother, has left her family and moved back to the Dominican Republic. Ralph, the dad, now drinks too much after losing his record store, his wife, and his health. Penelope returns to Bed-Stuy to help her father, but she is alienated from her patents and angry with them both. An artist who couldn’t abide art school critiques, she now looks for any job to pay her rent - because she won’t return to the house on Halsey Street. The story is told alternately from the perspectives of Mirella and Penelope. It also moves back and forth in time, revealing the many fissures in the relationships. The main characters are often unlikeable in their selfishness and bitterness. And it’s sad to see these poor people so unmoored when they could have weathered these storms together. I thought the book was overlong. The issues in the relationships are revealed early and the rest is a bit of a slog. There is quite a bit about gentrification as the catalyst for what follows, but the cracks were there long before. I would have liked more about the difficulties of Dominicans both in NY and at home. There was very little about the culture of Mirella though there was some intimation of the conflict between her background and Ralph’s. I think the story also missed Ralph’s voice. The ending was unexpected but satisfying. It gives you a sense of hope that this little family will mend some of their hurts and learn to love again. Maybe it isn’t too late.

I wanted to love this book! The title lured me, connecting with my nostalgia for my Brooklyn childhood. I lived near Prospect Park & spent a lot of time in Bed-Stuy where my grandparents lived. But there were just too many issues for me to overcome. And I really don’t read books to be a critic, I just want to enjoy the past time. So the issues: 1. The writing was fine, storytelling just ok, but overall the journey was not satisfying. Some themes were under developed, some compelling themes ended up not contributing to the story so in hindsight they seem random or just excess material, and there were no passages that stood out in any meaningful way. There were no highs, just a long relatively flat low. 2. I thought it an odd choice that the Spanish in places was left untranslated, & a translation couldn’t be inferred from subsequent dialogue. As a reader that tells me it’s not probably not germane to the story (I guess) - but then why include it? 3. And maybe most of all for me, the characters were problematic. Besides being so irredeemably flawed, the characters are just so unlikeable. All of them. Except maybe Jon. There’s so much anger & inconsistency & unsubstantiated choices - I found myself shaking my head on several occasions.

This book had its ups and downs for me, but all in all, it is one I'll remember. Ms. Coster paints a vivid view of neighborhood gentrification and what it means to the original inhabitants of an area. They certainly feel loss for the "old neighborhood." While this takes place in BedSty, it could be anywhere big-city USA. I was impatient with Penelope at times, wallowing in self-pity for her dreams unrealized, yet unwilling to change. Ralph's loss of the store he cherished due to a new wave of sushi, health food, and designer coffee shops is very poignant. Less compelling is Mirella's tale, her dislike of her life and her flight to the Dominican Republic. She is not a very sympathetic character which makes her parts of the book of less interest to me. I didn't get the feel of the island that might have elevated those sections. Samantha, Marcus and Grace represent the newcomers to the neighborhood who believe they're making things better, but at the same time fear the neighborhood as unsafe and make no effort to become part of their new home place. Samantha uses a hired car to take her into Manhattan and does not ride the subway or walk in BedSty. Ms. Coster does overdo the Black/White, us vs. them, theme, I think. Once we know which characters are Black, the reader doesn't need to be reminded again and again. This was a satisfying read and one that makes you think outside your own experience. The writing style tells the stories of these characters smoothly. This was time well spent.

Loved the characters, they had real emotional value, nothing safe and shallow. The author never went for the easy ‘sweet’ option to make a comfortable storyline.

Halsey Street is a whirlpool of emotions epitomising the complexities of Afro-Caribbean motherhood. I especially liked the stark contrast between the demonisation Penélope does of her mother from the beginning of the novel, and Mirella's actual story of oppression and repression recounted through her voice and reflections.

Interesting read

It was great. Loved it. Very true to life.

I could understand why Penelope was what she was, but sometimes she was more mean than the evolution of her character suggested.