Halsey Street

I honestly have no idea where I got this book recommendation. I think I may have picked it up off the Librarian’s Favorites shelf at the library. Regardless, I am so glad I read it!

Penelope Grand is comfortable with her life. She goes on runs, sketches object studies, drinks her gin and tends bar in Pittsburgh, close enough to see her ailing father in Brooklyn every few months but far away enough to avoid confronting the pain brought on my his decline. Everything changes when her father suffers a bad fall and Penelope moves back to her native Bed-Stuy to be nearer to him.

The neighborhood she returns to is both familiar and foreign. She sees old family friends and begins teaching art at her old school, but wine bars, trendy bistros and new white neighbors from a wave of gentrification have undeniably changed her home.

In addition to the changes in her neighborhood, Penelope must confront the changes at her father’s house on Halsey Street. Her father is not the strong, capable businessman she remembers as her hero. And her mother abandoned them both to go back to her native Dominican Republic. Her father’s weakening state and her mother’s abandonment sting more than Penelope wants to admit. When her mother tries to reconnect, Penelope must confront her pain to have any hope of finding love and family herself.

At times, the characters were downright infuriating, and sometimes their cruelty to one another was astounding. But they were still sympathetic. I found myself rooting for them despite all their frustrating imperfections. Coster’s storytelling and the character’s well-told histories helped me understand how their experiences of pain and rejection created their bitterness.

I found this book deeply engrossing. Living in Brooklyn myself, I enjoyed reading descriptions of the city and the way gentrification affects neighborhoods and communities. I thought Coster wrote insightfully about the tension of living in a gentrifying neighborhood, exploring multiple nuanced points of view. Her themes of family, home, belonging and purpose resonated with me, and I could not put Halsey Street down.Coster’s writing kept me on the edge of my seat, and there several twists that surprised me. At the end, I was dying to talk about it with someone to process all my thoughts!