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Halsey Street edition by Naima Coster Literature Fiction eBooks

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Halsey Street edition by Naima Coster Literature Fiction eBooks

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.


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Halsey Street edition by Naima Coster Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews

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.
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 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.
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.