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636 reviews for:

The Street

Ann Petry

4.34 AVERAGE

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
emotional informative tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
dark reflective sad slow-paced
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Really well written. Keeps you reading even though the pace is slow and the plot extremely depressing. 

There's nothing happy or hopeful about this story, and the layers of oppression and injustice remain virtually unchanged almost a century later. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Wat mij vooral opvalt aan dit boek is dat je voor iedereen een mate van sympathie kan opwekken en je kan begrijpen waarom iemand vastzit in de situatie waarin hij of zij zit. De menselijkheid van dit verhaal maakt dat je emotioneel bij iedereen betrokken raakt en de hopeloosheid van de situatie je ook echt naar de keel vliegt. Hoewel treurig en met weinig hoop deed het mij niet bitter aan. 
challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
fast-paced
dark sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

grannie petry was gifted literary artist…. this novel gives high school english lit reading list, but in the BEST possible way 🫢 her character-building skills were impeccable, my only tiny issue is the repetitiveness of Lutie’s inner dialogue, but that’s about it! strongly recommend if you wanna get into your Black American classics bag 🤌🏾

The 1940's is such a great time period for a novel. The war is over but the effects are still being felt. There are movie theaters but no televisions. Black people are free, but not really.
I would say this book is a great character novel, which I'm learning is right in my wheelhouse. Not much happens but man this author can write. She draws a villain so well you want to stop reading the book. The characters are flawed but real and will stick with me for a long time.

A passage:

"She listened intently to the record. It was “Darlin’,” and when the voice on the record stopped she started singing: “There’s no sun, Darlin’. There’s no fun, Darlin’.”

The men and the women crowded at the bar stopped drinking to look at her. Her voice had a thin thread of sadness running through it that made the song important, that made it tell a story that wasn’t in the words—a story of despair, of loneliness, of frustration. It was a story that all of them knew by heart and had always known because they had learned it soon after they were born and would go on adding to it until the day they died."