Halsey Street

by Naima Coster

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503941168
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	06/26/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	607,704
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

A masterful tale of family failures and forgiveness.” —People

“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

“But where Halsey Street most impresses is in its sharp and sophisticated moral sense. Take the issue of gentrification. In lesser hands, this could become—in many works of contemporary literary fiction, does become—ham-fisted or preachy. Coster’s treatment, though, is always gracefully done. We don’t get a fictional ‘take’ on gentrification. Rather, we get a story that makes the phenomenon meaningful through its narrative integration…Halsey Street regularly rejects simplicity for complexity. Like Woolf said of Middlemarch this is a novel written for grown-up people—the most surprising and satisfying element in a continually surprising and satisfying debut.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Halsey Street pays careful, detailed attention to the ways family ties can splinter and fester and ache, and the way a neighborhood that used to be familiar but no longer is creates a feeling of isolation…And [it] offers the same attentiveness to the changing landscape of Brooklyn, and to a Bed-Stuy that is rapidly becoming unrecognizable. It’s a detailed portrait that’s almost a love letter.” —Vox

“Active erasure shows up strongly in Naima Coster’s beautiful debut novel, Halsey Street…In her portrayal of a borough that’s lost its identity, Coster paints a vivid image of a broken family that isn’t clear how to move forward, but knows that it must in order to survive. We become who we must be, particularly in times of turmoil. Brooklyn is not what it used to be, so what will it become? Halsey Street grapples with that question.” —BitchMedia

“A meditation on family, love, gentrification, and home.” —The Millions

“Halsey Street tackles big issues like race, gentrification, and immigration but what’s most beautiful about Coster’s novel is that it is primarily about two women coming home and navigating the bewildering territory of their adult relationships with each other, with their pasts, and with their homes. Coster gives her characters of color permission to just be people—messy, hurt, sometimes hurtful, generally-mystified-by-life human people—liberating them (and thereby all her grateful women of color readers) from having to always be all of the demographic identities that precede them in a world that considers them first an aberration and a problem.” —Bustle

“This moving yarn gives us enchanting heroine Penelope Grand. She’s dealing with her suddenly gentrified neighborhood, which presents unwelcome surprises.” —Essence

“Halsey Street takes on gentrification, focusing on the relationship between a mother leaving home and a millennial daughter returning home. Forgiveness and empathy are central themes to this piece of authentic fiction, in which Coster takes on intergenerational multiculturalism.” —PEN America

“Naima Coster is definitely a writer to watch. Her clear-eyed writing interrogates race, class, and family in a refreshing and thoroughly engaging way. A lovely and thoughtful book.” —Jacqueline Woodson, author of Another Brooklyn and National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming

“This is the story of a family—which means it’s the story of imperfect and vulnerable creatures—failing at love no matter their efforts. In Halsey Street, Naima Coster shows us one young woman’s tangled efforts to return home and repair the intimacies we can hardly live without. It’s a poignant, moving book, written with deep empathy and sophistication.” —Ben Marcus, author of Leaving the Sea and The Flame Alphabet

“In this lovely novel, Naima Coster captures, with depth and nuance, the yearnings, ambivalence, and insecurities of a woman on the brink of adulthood. In the process of healing old wounds, Penelope Grand must mend complex fractures in relationships with her estranged mother in the Dominican Republic and her father in Brooklyn. An exceptional debut that explores how to find meaning within the shifting emotions and tangled webs of connection.” —Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train and Piece of the World

“Naima Coster’s first novel is rich and flavorsome, a portrait of a Brooklyn neighborhood in decline and renewal, and of a young woman—a risk-taker, fierce and yet loving. First novels rarely come as skilled, touching, and real as Halsey Street.” —John Crowley, author of Ka and Little, Big

“Coster’s absorbing and beautifully written novel Halsey Street haunts me still. Set in two cities I love, Pittsburgh and New York, it’s both lucidly familiar and emotionally unpredictable. It’s a novel that faces head-on the complicated ways women are split between their duty to their families and their personal passions. In this deeply profound and moving story, Penelope es tremenda!” —Angie Cruz, author of Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee

“How does one gifted young woman find her life? Through a deep journey of mind, body, and spirit across cultures, classes, and city blocks. Coster’s Penelope rises and falls, flies and stumbles, and goes straight to the heart in this beauty of a debut. Get to Halsey Street as fast as you can.” —Stacey D’Erasmo, author of Wonderland

“Halsey Street introduces Naima Coster as an important new voice—wise, elegant and utterly engaging. Her protagonist Penelope is a fierce yet tender heroine who must navigate modern-day Brooklyn, must learn to move between classes and countries. Coster captures the ache and longing of living life as an outsider, while also illuminating the force of history and family. A remarkable, heartbreaking debut.” —Rebecca Godfrey, author of The Torn Skirt and Under the Bridge

“A poignant and absorbing Brooklyn elegy, told by a young woman lost in the no-man’s-land between gentrifier and gentrified.” —Johanna Lane, author of Black Lake

“With this debut, Naima Coster has established herself as a major new talent of literary realism. A tale of what happens when your own past is rendered as unknowable as your future, this family story looks at all the different ways loss defines us. Brooklyn is under trial for Coster’s Grand family in a way any New Yorker can recognize, but Coster goes the additional mile to investigate the nuances of the gentrified and the gentrifiers. Race, ethnicity, and class are masterfully challenged in this narrative of self-discovery and the quest to preserve one’s heritage while honoring lifesaving transformation. A brilliant debut.” —Porochista Khakpour, author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion

From the Publisher

12/18/2017
In her perceptive, memorable debut, Coster reveals the personal toll that gentrification takes on one damaged Bed-Stuy family. Twenty-something art school dropout Penelope Grand has been living in Pittsburgh for several years and has no plans to return to her native Brooklyn. But after her ailing father, Ralph, takes a fall, she returns to help care for him. Ralph’s record store was once the crown jewel of the neighborhood’s black-owned businesses, with all the status that conferred; after business dwindled and he sold out to a trendy organic grocer, he has steadily declined, along with—in his estimation—the neighborhood itself. “It’s all just stuff to them,” he tells Penelope. “Stuff they think they deserve because they can afford it.” Penelope’s homecoming dredges up uncomfortable memories; as she negotiates the still-familiar streets, she attempts to define her place within her family, neighborhood, and artistic community, all of which comes to a head when her estranged mother invites her to the Dominican Republic. 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. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 01/01/2018
When Penelope Grand leaves Pittsburgh and her failed art career to return to Brooklyn to be near her aging and ailing father, Ralph, she discovers her old neighborhood is barely recognizable owing to gentrification. But Penelope, independent and unwilling to move back into her fractured family's home (her estranged mother, Mirella, left them and moved back to the Dominican Republic), rents the attic apartment from a well-off white family nearby. Despite a positive beginning, relations with her landlords quickly become strained, and after Ralph has an accident, Penelope surprises everyone and accepts Mirella's postcard invitation to visit her. The women have different motives and expectations, though, and the future is uncertain thanks to their shared pride and stubbornness. 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. VERDICT Wow. Powerful, unforgettable, and not to be missed.—Samantha Gust, Niagara Univ. Lib., NY

Library Journal

05/01/2018
Penelope is in a quarter-life crisis. Having dropped out of art school, she spends her days underemployed, drinking gin, and taking anonymous lovers. She can no longer hide out in Pittsburgh when she receives a call that her father, the incomparable Ralph Grand, has harmed himself, and she must come back to her home in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and care for him. Matters are further complicated when Penelope must reach out to her estranged mother, Mirella, now living in the Dominican Republic, who abandoned her father a few years before to rediscover herself back in the country of her birth. With great subtlety and detail, Coster has woven a tale that deals with gentrification, loneliness, and a very flawed and complex family. Penelope is deeply imperfect but remains relatable and real. As she navigates a neighborhood that was once her childhood home, as well as the location of her father's once successful business, she and her family grieve not only for what they've lost but also what they have become. VERDICT This is a tender story that packs as much hurt as it does heart. Recommended for fans of Zinzi Clemmons's What We Lose and Brit Bennett's The Mothers.—Christina Vortia, Hype Lit, Land O'Lakes, FL

School Library Journal

Halsey Street, in Brooklyn, where Penelope lives, is a place any listener might like to visit, despite Penelope's mixed feelings about the place—and her family. Narrator Bahni Turpin's performance is gorgeous. Her voice has a texture that suits the nuances of the novel's plot: easy enough to absorb but with a depth and grittiness that make it interesting and real. As the novel opens, Penelope's family has been splintered for a while, and, thanks to Turpin's skilled performance, listeners come to care about these flawed, authentic people right away. She gives the varied characters distinct voices, and with a clear-eyed candor brings to life their conflicts, which expand to include larger social issues. Well-written and beautifully read, HALSEY STREET is worth a stroll. L.B.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

★ 2017-08-06
A quiet gut-punch of a debut, Coster's novel is a family saga set against the landscape of gentrifying Brooklyn.After five years away in Pittsburgh—a city whose primary appeal is its distance from Brooklyn—Penelope Grand, former artist and current bartender, reluctantly returns to Bedford-Stuyvesant to care for her ailing and beloved father, Ralph, moving into a sublet a few streets away from her childhood home. But the neighborhood has changed in her absence: her landlords, the Harpers, new to the block from the West Village, embody the shift—a young family, white, wealthy, attracted to the "historic" homes and the lower price tags. And yet the Harpers' charming yellow house—and the affections of the charming father—offer Penelope an escape from the life she's returned to. At least for a while. But when a postcard from her estranged mother, Mirella, shows up addressed to her from the Dominican Republic (Penelope isn't the only one in her family desperate for escape), Penelope is forced to deal with a past she'd rather ignore. Alternating between Penelope's perspective and Mirella's, moving seamlessly back and forth in time, Coster pieces together the story of the Grand family: Mirella and Ralph's early courtship and the first days of their marriage in Brooklyn, Ralph's iconic record store and the accident that followed its closing, Penelope's miserable freshman year at the Rhode Island School of Design, her childhood trips with Mirella to the DR, and now—in the present—their final chance at something like reconciliation. Gorgeous and painfully unsentimental, the book resists easy moralizing: everyone is wonderful and terrible, equal parts disappointed and disappointing. The plot is simple, relatively speaking, but Coster is a masterful observer of family dynamics: her characters, to a one, are wonderfully complex and consistently surprising. Absorbing and alive, the kind of novel that swallows you whole.

Kirkus Reviews