A review by lynecia
Halsey Street by Naima Coster

4.0

Though named for a street in Brooklyn’s famous Bed-Stuy section, Halsey Street, Naima Coster’s debut novel isn’t really about that burgeoning community. The books shifts from Pittsburgh, to Brooklyn to the Caribbean island of the Dominican Republic and back again. Brooklyn, and more specifically Bed-Stuy, these days is synonymous with gentrification. In fact, many have hailed this book being about gentrification, including myself before I read it. Though that’s a theme that runs through it, this book isn’t really about that either.

For me, this book is about family and belonging; longing and loneliness. Penelope Grand, an art school dropout suddenly returns to her hometown in Brooklyn from her self imposed exile in Pittsburgh after her father, Ralph experiences an accident and needs to be looked after. Adrift and lonely, instead of moving back into her family’s brownstone she decides to rent an attic apartment from a nearby family, The Harpers. We soon learn that Penelope’s mother, Mirella, is absent - she too, fleeing Brooklyn, back to her home in the Dominican Republic.

Coster tells this story from both the perspectives of Penelope and her mother - which honestly is a device I find hit or miss - but here, it feels as if Coster took care to really hone the voices of this mother and daughter and both characters emerge as equally strong voices.
Penelope is messy, angry, and harboring unforgiveness and reeling from abandonment issues.
Mirella is headstrong, yet cold and aloof - closed off with frustration at the marriage that unfulfilled her and the daughter she struggled to relate to.

When Mirella wants to reconnect, all hell breaks loose it seems and it is not really until the end where it’s really revealed what secrets and regrets really tore this family apart in the first place.

I really enjoyed wrestling with these two complicated women as I read; trust you won’t like either one of them! Penelope grapples with her feelings of aloneness in moody gin-soaked episodes, and makes mistakes we can see coming a mile away and Mirella is just so damn out of with her feelings in my opinion that when she does try to reach out to connect to her daughter its tentative and clumsy, but she tries.

My only real qualm was the ending’s plot twist which caught me by surprise and even though it was quite dramatic it still did not produce the emotional shift or growth in one of the characters that you’d expect. I still think about that part a lot. It’s life, right? Some people are just kinda messed up and get stuck trying to navigate life as best as they can.