Halsey Street, Naima Coster
Halsey Street, Naima Coster
4 Rating(s)
List: $42.99 | Sale: $30.10
Club: $21.49

Halsey Street

Author: Naima Coster

Narrator: Bahni Turpin

Unabridged: 9 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 01/01/2018


Synopsis

Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction.A modern-day story of family, loss, and renewal, Halsey Street captures the deeply human need to belong—not only to a place but to one another.Penelope Grand has scrapped her failed career as an artist in Pittsburgh and moved back to Brooklyn to keep an eye on her ailing father. She’s accepted that her future won’t be what she’d dreamed, but now, as gentrification has completely reshaped her old neighborhood, even her past is unrecognizable. Old haunts have been razed, and wealthy white strangers have replaced every familiar face in Bed-Stuy. Even her mother, Mirella, has abandoned the family to reclaim her roots in the Dominican Republic. That took courage. It’s also unforgivable.When Penelope moves into the attic apartment of the affluent Harpers, she thinks she’s found a semblance of family—and maybe even love. But her world is upended again when she receives a postcard from Mirella asking for reconciliation. As old wounds are reopened, and secrets revealed, a journey across an ocean of sacrifice and self-discovery begins.An engrossing debut, Halsey Street shifts between the perspectives of these two captivating, troubled women. Mirella has one last chance to win back the heart of the daughter she’d lost long before leaving New York, and for Penelope, it’s time to break free of the hold of the past and start navigating her own life.

About Naima Coster

Naima Coster is a native of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. She holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, an MA in English and creative writing from Fordham University, and a BA in English and African American studies from Yale. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Guernica, Arts & Letters, Kweli, and the Rumpus. Coster is the recipient of numerous awards and a Pushcart Prize nomination. A former editor of CURA and a former mentor of Girls Write Now, Coster is also a proud alumna of Prep for Prep, the leadership development program in New York City aiding high-potential minority students in public, charter, and parochial schools. She currently teaches writing in North Carolina, where she lives with her family. Halsey Street is her first novel.


Reviews

Goodreads review by BookOfCinz on March 06, 2018

I wanted to love this book. I wanted to let everyone know how amazing this book was. I wanted to sing praises about this book but it just fell flat. I felt the book was slow, the character development was limited and I generally just lost interest 30% in. Hasley Street is told from the perspective o......more

Goodreads review by Joel Nygard on December 12, 2017

I tried, and then I tried some more to slog thru this book's main characters' unhappiness and selfishness because I was sure there would be growth and reconciliation ..eventually. 68% through I gave up, and I never give up on a book. I love reading immensely. I couldn't relate to the characters. I c......more

Goodreads review by Gabriella on January 07, 2018

Naima Coster’s debut novel centers around a family in Bed-Stuy and the Dominican Republic, whose members know loss as well as their backyards, and have learned to hold nothing sacred because of it. The POV characters, Penelope Grand and her estranged mother Mirella, are especially skeptical—of marri......more

Goodreads review by Katy O. on January 09, 2019

This book is so hard for me to review, because it was NOT an easy book for me to listen to. I was simultaneously appreciating the importance of the storylines about gentrification in Brooklyn and the intricacies of parent-adult child relationships while wanting to scream at the main character about......more


Quotes

“In her stunning debut novel, Coster remarkably renders the complexities of people and their many relationships as well as the tricky interplay of past and present. Alternately delivered from the perspective of Penelope and Mirella (with a little Spanish mixed in), Coster’s realistic depictions of these two hurt and angry women and the broken man who connects them will haunt readers while making them flinch, gasp, and quite possibly cry. Wow. Powerful, unforgettable, and not to be missed.” Library Journal (starred review)“A quiet gut-punch of a debut…Absorbing and alive, the kind of novel that swallows you whole.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“In her perceptive, memorable debut, Coster reveals the personal toll that gentrification takes on one damaged Bed-Stuy family…Penelope’s status as both an insider and an outsider in her childhood home affords Coster an acute perspective from which to consider the repercussions of gentrification, as well as a family’s legacy of self-destruction.” Publishers Weekly