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Visitation Street
Chosen by Denis Lehane for his eponymous imprint, Ivy Pochoda’s Visitation Street is a riveting literary mystery set against the rough-hewn backdrop of the New York waterfront in Red Hook.
It’s summertime in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a blue-collar dockside neighborhood. June and Val, two fifteen-year-olds, take a raft out onto the bay at night to see what they can see.
And then they disappear. Only Val will survive, washed ashore; semi-conscious in the weeds.
This shocking event will echo through the lives of a diverse cast of Red Hook residents. Fadi, the Lebanese bodega owner, hopes that his shop will be the place to share neighborhood news and troll for information about June’s disappearance. Cree, just beginning to pull it together after his father’s murder, unwittingly makes himself the chief suspect, but an enigmatic and elusive guardian is determined to keep him safe.
Val contends with the shadow of her missing friend and a truth she buries deep inside. Her teacher Jonathan, a Julliard School dropout and barfly, wrestles with dashed dreams and a past riddled with tragic sins.
It’s summertime in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a blue-collar dockside neighborhood. June and Val, two fifteen-year-olds, take a raft out onto the bay at night to see what they can see.
And then they disappear. Only Val will survive, washed ashore; semi-conscious in the weeds.
This shocking event will echo through the lives of a diverse cast of Red Hook residents. Fadi, the Lebanese bodega owner, hopes that his shop will be the place to share neighborhood news and troll for information about June’s disappearance. Cree, just beginning to pull it together after his father’s murder, unwittingly makes himself the chief suspect, but an enigmatic and elusive guardian is determined to keep him safe.
Val contends with the shadow of her missing friend and a truth she buries deep inside. Her teacher Jonathan, a Julliard School dropout and barfly, wrestles with dashed dreams and a past riddled with tragic sins.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
424 people are currently reading
11438 people want to read
About the author
Ivy Pochoda
11 books791 followersIvy Pochoda is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Visitation Street published by Ecco / Dennis Lehane Books. Visitation Street was chosen as an Amazon Best Book of the Month, Amazon Best Book of 2013, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Huffington Post, Self, and House & Garden. Her first novel The Art of Disappearing, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2009. She has a BA from Harvard College in Classical Greek and an MFA from Bennington College in fiction. Ivy grew up in Brooklyn, NY and currently lives in downtown Los Angeles with her husband Justin Nowell.
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February 20, 2025
If Ivy Pochoda never writes another book, (well, as of 2025 she has written several, all pretty good) this one would be enough to keep her name on the lips of readers for decades to come. On a hot July night in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, (named, BTW, for the color of its soil and an erstwhile geographical point, not for the hook-shaped pier that juts out from it today) two fifteen-year-old girls, Val Marino and June Giotta, looking for a little fun, take a small raft out into the city’s upper bay.
Only one returns, found unconscious under the pylons of a local pier.
What happened?
There is danger in being in love. When we are in love we tend to lift up the things about our beloved that appeal, while minimizing, if we see at all, the things that do not. My feeling about Visitation Street reminds me of that. There is an air of ecstasy about it, as if I have found The One. And maybe there are flaws that I simply cannot see because of the overwhelming feeling of excitement that I experienced while reading this book. For what it’s worth, I have had this feeling several times in the last few years, with The Orchardist, Caribou Island, Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk, and Skippy Dies, to name a few. I have not felt any regret about declaring my love for them, and do not expect any regrets this time around. But just so’s ya know. Ahm in luuuuv. My wife understands.
This is a magnificent book, very reminiscent in power and achievement to Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River. In fact the book is released under the imprint Dennis Lehane Books, and seeing how reminiscent it is of Mystic River that seems appropriate. Ivy Pochoda has achieved a stunning success in so many ways in Visitation Street that it is difficult to know where to begin. How about characters?
Pochoda clearly has a gift for portraying people. Val is struggling to remember what happened that night, and we feel her pain as she travels from forgetting to remembrance. Eighteen-year-old Acretius James, Cree, struggles to overcome the death of his Corrections Officer father, Marcus, and to find direction in his life. He spends a lot of his time on a beached boat left by his dad.
[Was this boat, seen on a pier off Beard Street, the inspiration for this?]
Will he remain moored in the rubble of the past or find a way to sail forth? Jonathan Sprouse, a musician and music teacher at a local parochial school, and borderline alcoholic, has a lifetime of descent interrupted by an opportunity to do something worthwhile. He hears the world differently from you and me.Laura Palmer June Giotta. (and what is going on across the street from his shop with the owner of that place and the wino who seems always to be hanging out there?)
[Here is the real-world place that provided the model for Fadi’s]
Finally, Ren is a mysterious protector who appears, seemingly out of nowhere, to watch over Cree and Val. (For those who are familiar, think the Super-Hoodie character in the British TV series, Misfits ) Pochoda makes us care about every one of these people. She breathes life into them, giving us reasons to want them to succeed. We feel the love for these characters that their creator obviously does. But they are all, well, except for Fadi, damaged people, sinking, needing a life preserver of one sort or another. Val is a basket case after that night. Jonathan was born playing first violin and somehow finds himself at the back of the orchestra. Cree suffers from the loss of his father and Ren has a dark past that has defined much of his life. But they struggle to rise above the waves, and we cheer their efforts.
Next is the landscape, which, in this case, is the most significant character in the story. When SuperBitch Sandy raised the ocean's wrath in 2012, devastating large swaths of the East Coast, it was not the first time that Red Hook had been laid waste. The area had once been the primary entryway of grain to the nation. Large proportions of the nation's sugar was imported and refined in Red Hook, and a considerable swath of the metro area's beer was processed there. But the dock jobs moved to newer ports, the neighborhood was bisected when Robert Moses carved an elevated trench through it with the construction of the Gowanus Expressway, and the crack epidemic led Red Hook to be declared one of the worst neighborhoods in the nation in 1990. But Red Hook had been making a comeback. A new frou-frou supermarket has been built in a Civil War era waterfront building (it is referred to in the book as Local Harvest, but is in reality a Fairway. I have shopped there and it is fabulous, or at least it was before Sandy destroyed it. It reopened in March 2013) The story is set in 2006. There is now an IKEA in Red Hook, occupying what was an abandoned dockyard at the time of the story. On the next pier down was an abandoned sugar refinery, which was demolished in 2007, so don’t go looking.
This image was found in Gothamist.com and permission was granted to use it here
A cruise ship terminal, imminent for most of the book, is opened by the end.
The Queen Mary II, at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal - 7/6/13
The change in the neighborhood is part of the world Pochoda describes. There is, by the way, a Visitation Place, on which is located a Visitation rectory.
We presume that the day care center at which the girls worked is there as well. There is a real Red Hook Gospel Tabernacle to match the one in the story. People were indeed killed in this neighborhood from drug-related gang violence, most notably a school principal who had walked out of his public school looking for one of his students, and took a stray round. In the Red Hook Houses, recently devastated by Sandy, reside some 8,000 people, in less than idyllic conditions. It is still a tough place.
So we have amazing characters and a spot-on depiction of a neighborhood in transition from drug center to the next cool place. Next comes plot. There is indeed a compelling mystery, and Pochoda is no less skilled at peeling back the layers in that than she is in revealing her characters, bit by bit. You will want to know what took place and Pochoda will let you know, in due time.
Next is the introduction of a dose of magical realism. Cree’s mother, Gloria, has the sight. Enough of a talent to spend countless days talking (visiting?) with her dead husband, while sitting on the memorial bench that had been erected to his memory. (This was inspired by the death of that public school principal. A school was named for him. Cree’s father must make do with the bench.) Enough of a talent that locals come to her for help in communicating with their dearly departed. That particular strand of DNA did not come to Cree, but his grandmother and his aunt also have the ability, and there may be another family member in line as well. After that night, Val sees and hears things. Is she losing her mind? She is not alone. How the people visited by these incomings handle the stress of it is a significant element of the tale as well. Is it real at all or merely the self-inflicted manifestation of guilt?
The notion of ghosts is prominent here in Pochoda’s Red Hook. Certainly the death of Cree’s father is a spectre that continues to impact both his son and his widow. Jonathan carries with him the burden of a death as well. Val must cope with the death of her friend, and Ren not only has death-related memories that live on for him, but has seen the torment of many others.
The final piece here is the power of Pochoda’s writing. Here is a sample.
Ok, there have to be a few chinks in the armor here, somewhere, right? I looked pretty closely at the geography of the events, and it seemed a stretch. For example, did Jonathan really carry the unconscious Val eight blocks to Fadi’s? Well, he is a young guy, 28, 29, so yeah, I guess it is possible. There is no inpatient hospital in Red Hook, and I have not yet found out whether there was one there in 2006. But I continue to search. The four-corners location which includes Fadi’s bodega appears to be located not at the intersection of Visitation and Van Brunt, but a block away at Pioneer Street. These are small items, and I have no trouble with the author using a bit of elastic geography to support her story. Certainly “Visitation “works better than “Pioneer,” the actual name of the street where the bar and bodega intersect Van Brunt, particularly as characters here are visited, in one way or another.
This not a book you will want to begin before bedtime, as you may find yourself reading straight through and costing yourself a good chunk of a night’s sleep. We are in can’t-put-it-down territory here. And you might want to have a good cardiologist nearby when you finish reading this book. It’s gonna break your heart.
It’s no secret. I love this book. But I’m a modern guy and this is not an exclusive love. I am more than happy to share. Don’t let this one sink beneath the waves of your attention. Reach in and pull it out. This is simply an amazing book. You must read it.
==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below.
Only one returns, found unconscious under the pylons of a local pier.
What happened?
There is danger in being in love. When we are in love we tend to lift up the things about our beloved that appeal, while minimizing, if we see at all, the things that do not. My feeling about Visitation Street reminds me of that. There is an air of ecstasy about it, as if I have found The One. And maybe there are flaws that I simply cannot see because of the overwhelming feeling of excitement that I experienced while reading this book. For what it’s worth, I have had this feeling several times in the last few years, with The Orchardist, Caribou Island, Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk, and Skippy Dies, to name a few. I have not felt any regret about declaring my love for them, and do not expect any regrets this time around. But just so’s ya know. Ahm in luuuuv. My wife understands.
This is a magnificent book, very reminiscent in power and achievement to Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River. In fact the book is released under the imprint Dennis Lehane Books, and seeing how reminiscent it is of Mystic River that seems appropriate. Ivy Pochoda has achieved a stunning success in so many ways in Visitation Street that it is difficult to know where to begin. How about characters?
Pochoda clearly has a gift for portraying people. Val is struggling to remember what happened that night, and we feel her pain as she travels from forgetting to remembrance. Eighteen-year-old Acretius James, Cree, struggles to overcome the death of his Corrections Officer father, Marcus, and to find direction in his life. He spends a lot of his time on a beached boat left by his dad.
[Was this boat, seen on a pier off Beard Street, the inspiration for this?]
Will he remain moored in the rubble of the past or find a way to sail forth? Jonathan Sprouse, a musician and music teacher at a local parochial school, and borderline alcoholic, has a lifetime of descent interrupted by an opportunity to do something worthwhile. He hears the world differently from you and me.
The wino’s voice catches Jonathan’s ear. It’s dissonant, all flats and sharps with no clear words.and later
Nearly every day Jonathan tells Fadi about a piece of music that’s perfectly suited to the moment. Last week he said, “It’s an afternoon for Gershwin. Mostly sunny, a little snappy, but with a hint of rain.” And two evenings ago he asked. “Did you see the sunset? Only Philip Glass could write a sunset like that.”Fadi is a bodega owner, invested in helping his community, and he works to try to unravel the mystery of what happened to
[Here is the real-world place that provided the model for Fadi’s]
Finally, Ren is a mysterious protector who appears, seemingly out of nowhere, to watch over Cree and Val. (For those who are familiar, think the Super-Hoodie character in the British TV series, Misfits ) Pochoda makes us care about every one of these people. She breathes life into them, giving us reasons to want them to succeed. We feel the love for these characters that their creator obviously does. But they are all, well, except for Fadi, damaged people, sinking, needing a life preserver of one sort or another. Val is a basket case after that night. Jonathan was born playing first violin and somehow finds himself at the back of the orchestra. Cree suffers from the loss of his father and Ren has a dark past that has defined much of his life. But they struggle to rise above the waves, and we cheer their efforts.
Next is the landscape, which, in this case, is the most significant character in the story. When SuperBitch Sandy raised the ocean's wrath in 2012, devastating large swaths of the East Coast, it was not the first time that Red Hook had been laid waste. The area had once been the primary entryway of grain to the nation. Large proportions of the nation's sugar was imported and refined in Red Hook, and a considerable swath of the metro area's beer was processed there. But the dock jobs moved to newer ports, the neighborhood was bisected when Robert Moses carved an elevated trench through it with the construction of the Gowanus Expressway, and the crack epidemic led Red Hook to be declared one of the worst neighborhoods in the nation in 1990. But Red Hook had been making a comeback. A new frou-frou supermarket has been built in a Civil War era waterfront building (it is referred to in the book as Local Harvest, but is in reality a Fairway. I have shopped there and it is fabulous, or at least it was before Sandy destroyed it. It reopened in March 2013) The story is set in 2006. There is now an IKEA in Red Hook, occupying what was an abandoned dockyard at the time of the story. On the next pier down was an abandoned sugar refinery, which was demolished in 2007, so don’t go looking.
This image was found in Gothamist.com and permission was granted to use it here
A cruise ship terminal, imminent for most of the book, is opened by the end.
The Queen Mary II, at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal - 7/6/13
The change in the neighborhood is part of the world Pochoda describes. There is, by the way, a Visitation Place, on which is located a Visitation rectory.
We presume that the day care center at which the girls worked is there as well. There is a real Red Hook Gospel Tabernacle to match the one in the story. People were indeed killed in this neighborhood from drug-related gang violence, most notably a school principal who had walked out of his public school looking for one of his students, and took a stray round. In the Red Hook Houses, recently devastated by Sandy, reside some 8,000 people, in less than idyllic conditions. It is still a tough place.
So we have amazing characters and a spot-on depiction of a neighborhood in transition from drug center to the next cool place. Next comes plot. There is indeed a compelling mystery, and Pochoda is no less skilled at peeling back the layers in that than she is in revealing her characters, bit by bit. You will want to know what took place and Pochoda will let you know, in due time.
Next is the introduction of a dose of magical realism. Cree’s mother, Gloria, has the sight. Enough of a talent to spend countless days talking (visiting?) with her dead husband, while sitting on the memorial bench that had been erected to his memory. (This was inspired by the death of that public school principal. A school was named for him. Cree’s father must make do with the bench.) Enough of a talent that locals come to her for help in communicating with their dearly departed. That particular strand of DNA did not come to Cree, but his grandmother and his aunt also have the ability, and there may be another family member in line as well. After that night, Val sees and hears things. Is she losing her mind? She is not alone. How the people visited by these incomings handle the stress of it is a significant element of the tale as well. Is it real at all or merely the self-inflicted manifestation of guilt?
The notion of ghosts is prominent here in Pochoda’s Red Hook. Certainly the death of Cree’s father is a spectre that continues to impact both his son and his widow. Jonathan carries with him the burden of a death as well. Val must cope with the death of her friend, and Ren not only has death-related memories that live on for him, but has seen the torment of many others.
There wasn’t a goddamned night on the inside when I wasn’t woken by somebody haunted by the person he dropped. Ghosts aren’t the dead. They’re those the dead left behind. Stay here long enough, you’ll become one of them—another ghost haunting the Hook.Cree’s mother communes daily with her late husband. And the neighborhood itself echoes with the change from is to was:
As he crosses from this abandoned corner of the waterside back over to the Houses he becomes aware of the layers that form the Hook—the projects built over the frame houses, the pavement laid over the cobblestones, the lofts overtaking the factories, the grocery stores overlapping the warehouses. The new bars cannibalizing the old ones. The skeletons of forgotten buildings—the sugar refinery and the dry dock—surviving among the new concrete bunkers being passed off as luxury living. The living walk on top of the dead—the water front dead, the old mob dead, the drug war dead—everyone still there. A neighborhood of ghosts.I expect that by including references to sundry locations that have now moved on to another realm, Pochoda is linking the deaths and births on the landscape with the more human ghosts that inhabit this world. All these incredible characters come to life in this book, even though they are walking through a place as haunted as any graveyard.
The final piece here is the power of Pochoda’s writing. Here is a sample.
The women grow grungier and sexier the later it gets. Soon they bear no resemblance to the morning commuters who will tuck themselves into bus shelters along Van Brunt on Monday, polished and brushed and reasonably presentable to the world outside Red Hook. Nighttime abrades them, tangles their hair and chips their nails. Colors their speech. At night, the hundreds of nights they’ve passed the same way begin to show, revealed in their hollowed cheeks and rapid speech. Jonathan wonders how long it takes for their costumes to become their clothes, their tattoos their birthmarks. When will they let the outside world slip away and forget to retrieve it?Really, what could possibly be added to enhance that?
Ok, there have to be a few chinks in the armor here, somewhere, right? I looked pretty closely at the geography of the events, and it seemed a stretch. For example, did Jonathan really carry the unconscious Val eight blocks to Fadi’s? Well, he is a young guy, 28, 29, so yeah, I guess it is possible. There is no inpatient hospital in Red Hook, and I have not yet found out whether there was one there in 2006. But I continue to search. The four-corners location which includes Fadi’s bodega appears to be located not at the intersection of Visitation and Van Brunt, but a block away at Pioneer Street. These are small items, and I have no trouble with the author using a bit of elastic geography to support her story. Certainly “Visitation “works better than “Pioneer,” the actual name of the street where the bar and bodega intersect Van Brunt, particularly as characters here are visited, in one way or another.
This not a book you will want to begin before bedtime, as you may find yourself reading straight through and costing yourself a good chunk of a night’s sleep. We are in can’t-put-it-down territory here. And you might want to have a good cardiologist nearby when you finish reading this book. It’s gonna break your heart.
It’s no secret. I love this book. But I’m a modern guy and this is not an exclusive love. I am more than happy to share. Don’t let this one sink beneath the waves of your attention. Reach in and pull it out. This is simply an amazing book. You must read it.
==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below.
September 28, 2018
oh, good - a love letter to brooklyn. i was beginning to think NO ONE would EVER write a book about this forgotten borough. humph. and what do we have, sitting here in queens eating refried beans?
crickets.
but still. this is a fantastic book. not for the mystery element; that is pretty much secondary. no, make that tertiary. first and foremost, it is, indeed, a love letter to red hook. red hook is a section of brooklyn with which i am not overly familiar. but after reading this, i feel like i know everything about it. or at least how it was in 2006, when this book takes place, when red hook is on the very cusp of gentrification. lord knows it is probably completely overrun with hipsters and organic gastropubs by now.
a quick aside about gentrification, which you can choose to read, or not
okay - rant over! back to the book. in a lot of ways it reminded me of smoke, which takes place near red hook, but not in it, where the action revolves around a single store, and the local residents who drift in and out of it. in Visitation Street, a lot of the action filters through a bodega run by a man named fadi who genuinely loves the neighborhood and wants to create a more focused community spirit by creating a newsletter to address local concerns, celebrate local heroes, and help to solve the mystery of june's disappearance. while he welcomes the arrival of a cruise line that will bring commerce to the neighborhood, he also values the community as it is, in all its struggling vitality and pockets of unexpected beauty, like a piece of graffiti that creates an illusion of movement to tired passengers on public transportation. he is the clear heart and soul of this novel ,and red hook through his eyes just glows.
the secondary concern of the novel (ha! you thought i had forgotten what i started before my rant, but I HAVE NOT!) is its characters. this is a true multi-perspective novel, whose characters are given room to breathe and become fully fleshed out people, with the whole spectrum of human existence on display: love, loss, family, squandered talent, redemption, hope; all of these stories of lives lived packed into this dissection of a neighborhood, but not in a way that feels constricted. it seethes. but beautifully. a beautiful seething.
the mystery. tertiary. almost an afterthought. the disappearance of teenaged june after she and her pal val take a pink rubber raft out onto the water one night. val washes up under the dock, injured and with no memory of the events of the night, but june is nowhere to be found. the mystery will be resolved, never fear, but it is never the driving force. it is the backdrop to the story, as life in the neighborhood continues, as it does, even after a tragedy, and her disappearances is gossip, anecdote, a hole, but life goes on around her absence, and this is the story of those lives.
i accidentally deleted SO MUCH REVIEW, and i had to try to rewrite this thing from memory, so i apologize if it is a mess. i don't even have the stamina right now to try to fix it. ):
but it is a lovely book. so there.
come to my blog!
crickets.
but still. this is a fantastic book. not for the mystery element; that is pretty much secondary. no, make that tertiary. first and foremost, it is, indeed, a love letter to red hook. red hook is a section of brooklyn with which i am not overly familiar. but after reading this, i feel like i know everything about it. or at least how it was in 2006, when this book takes place, when red hook is on the very cusp of gentrification. lord knows it is probably completely overrun with hipsters and organic gastropubs by now.
a quick aside about gentrification, which you can choose to read, or not
okay - rant over! back to the book. in a lot of ways it reminded me of smoke, which takes place near red hook, but not in it, where the action revolves around a single store, and the local residents who drift in and out of it. in Visitation Street, a lot of the action filters through a bodega run by a man named fadi who genuinely loves the neighborhood and wants to create a more focused community spirit by creating a newsletter to address local concerns, celebrate local heroes, and help to solve the mystery of june's disappearance. while he welcomes the arrival of a cruise line that will bring commerce to the neighborhood, he also values the community as it is, in all its struggling vitality and pockets of unexpected beauty, like a piece of graffiti that creates an illusion of movement to tired passengers on public transportation. he is the clear heart and soul of this novel ,and red hook through his eyes just glows.
the secondary concern of the novel (ha! you thought i had forgotten what i started before my rant, but I HAVE NOT!) is its characters. this is a true multi-perspective novel, whose characters are given room to breathe and become fully fleshed out people, with the whole spectrum of human existence on display: love, loss, family, squandered talent, redemption, hope; all of these stories of lives lived packed into this dissection of a neighborhood, but not in a way that feels constricted. it seethes. but beautifully. a beautiful seething.
the mystery. tertiary. almost an afterthought. the disappearance of teenaged june after she and her pal val take a pink rubber raft out onto the water one night. val washes up under the dock, injured and with no memory of the events of the night, but june is nowhere to be found. the mystery will be resolved, never fear, but it is never the driving force. it is the backdrop to the story, as life in the neighborhood continues, as it does, even after a tragedy, and her disappearances is gossip, anecdote, a hole, but life goes on around her absence, and this is the story of those lives.
i accidentally deleted SO MUCH REVIEW, and i had to try to rewrite this thing from memory, so i apologize if it is a mess. i don't even have the stamina right now to try to fix it. ):
but it is a lovely book. so there.
come to my blog!
December 10, 2021
Two 15-year-old girls, Val and June - who live in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn - get bored one night and decide to ride a pool raft out into the nearby harbor.
In the morning an unconscious Val is found near the shore by Jonathan Sprouse, a high school music teacher, and June is missing.
Though it seems this would be the beginning of a mystery book it's really a character study of the people living in this run-down Brooklyn neighborhood.
Jonathan Sprouse is a disillusioned musician who drinks too much and lives in a dive.
Fadi, a delicatessen owner, is trying to keep the neighborhood connected with his newsletter.
Monique and some of her fellow teens are hanging out on park benches, making music.
Thugs are using drugs and harassing girls who wander into their corners.
A homeless community is making do in an abandoned shipyard.
Ren, a talented young graffiti artist, is making incredible murals.
Cree, whose cop dad was shot years before, is trying to get out of Red Hook but his mom won't leave the place her husband died.
There are psychic women who talk to ghosts, drunkards, angry parents, shop owners, average families who do weekend barbecues.....all rubbing shoulders in this small area.
Pochoda does a masterful job developing the characters and evoking the ambience of this Red Hook neighborhood. I almost felt like I lived there myself. In the end we learn what happened out in the harbor on the night June went missing and the Red Hook residents get on with their lives.
Good book. Highly recommended.
You can follow my reviews at https://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot....
July 12, 2013
This book was chosen by Dennis Lehane to be published under his imprint and after reading this I can certainly see why. The Red Hook area in Brooklyn, an area that contains middle class families, pushing against the tenements, a diverse grouping of people that have made some wonderful characters. For some reason this book has really resonated with me, I find myself thinking about it more and more. It is a book that has many different layers, there is much going on above and below the surface.
Two young girls, who have been friends for a long time, are bored and so they decide to take a plastic inflatable raft onto the East River. One girl is found, early the next morning half drowned, but the other is not found, leading everyone to speculate on what happened. The girl who is found claims she does not remember anything.
The big story though is not the missing girl, so much as what her disappearance causes others in the neighborhood to do and act. Layer by layer different people, have their lives exposed, hopes and dreams, restitution and punishment. It is the ghosts that are in our midst, those alive that we do not notice, ghosts that inhabit places we overlook, the ghosts of guilt and the fear of acceptance. Of course, there are real ghosts as well, those who have lived, that do not want to leave. It is about being instead of looking for a way out and appreciating what we have. Amazing book. I hope others think so too.
Two young girls, who have been friends for a long time, are bored and so they decide to take a plastic inflatable raft onto the East River. One girl is found, early the next morning half drowned, but the other is not found, leading everyone to speculate on what happened. The girl who is found claims she does not remember anything.
The big story though is not the missing girl, so much as what her disappearance causes others in the neighborhood to do and act. Layer by layer different people, have their lives exposed, hopes and dreams, restitution and punishment. It is the ghosts that are in our midst, those alive that we do not notice, ghosts that inhabit places we overlook, the ghosts of guilt and the fear of acceptance. Of course, there are real ghosts as well, those who have lived, that do not want to leave. It is about being instead of looking for a way out and appreciating what we have. Amazing book. I hope others think so too.
August 18, 2013
This story is about Red Hook, Brooklyn, and how it exists in the shadow of a glimmering Manhattan, and the author does not let you forget it. The people and events are secondary.
The author uses "Red Hook" as an adjective and name-drops it in every other sentence, in case the reader forgets where this little Red Hook story takes place (it's in Red Hook). I should have stopped reading when, in the first few pages, two Red Hook teenage girls take a Red Hook blow-up raft into the East River at night (really?) underneath a skyline which sparkles like a tired and overused simile. But my curiosity got the better of me so I carried on. (...IN THE EAST RIVER they went!)
Sadly, this was the best part of the book. The Red Hook narrators alternate between Red Hook chapters, telling us about their respective days. But nothing actually *happens* after the one Red Hook girl disappears in the East River underneath an under-appreciated and unforgiving Red Hook sky. (But not before we flash back to one Red Hook afternoon when the 2 girls cut school and strolled - ON FOOT - from Red Hook to the tip of Bay Ridge by the Verrazano, *AND THEN TO CONEY ISLAND* in what wound up being about 2 or 3 hours' time. Did the Universe fold over itself near Gravesend?)
The attempt at "Red Hook ghetto speak" (there are Red Hook housing projects nearby) leads me to believe the author grew up in Idaho and is drawing her references based on a couple episodes of In Living Color. A barely-lovable Red Hook scamp from the projects yearns for more. How original? (He was the most likable character in the book, though.)
Dear Author: If a Red Hook teenager gets on a Red Hook subway, we do not need a play-by-play of each stop passed and street crossed to believe that you "know" Brooklyn. YES WE GET IT. It takes place in BROOKLYN! Please LORD MAKE IT STOP! If I take back the "Idaho" comment will you stop name-dropping streets, landmarks, neighborhoods and subway stops and just tell us the damn story??
Without the words "Red Hook" and "skyline" the book would be 200 pages shorter in length and probably readable.
So many enthusiastic reviews for this book, so perhaps there's something I just didn't "get". I rolled my non-Red-Hook eyes so much at every redundant Red Hook reference that people were asking me "why are you still reading it then?"
I said "You're right! Life's too short."
And that's exactly what I yelled when I threw this Red Hook book out my Manhattan window onto the bustling Manhattan street below.
The author uses "Red Hook" as an adjective and name-drops it in every other sentence, in case the reader forgets where this little Red Hook story takes place (it's in Red Hook). I should have stopped reading when, in the first few pages, two Red Hook teenage girls take a Red Hook blow-up raft into the East River at night (really?) underneath a skyline which sparkles like a tired and overused simile. But my curiosity got the better of me so I carried on. (...IN THE EAST RIVER they went!)
Sadly, this was the best part of the book. The Red Hook narrators alternate between Red Hook chapters, telling us about their respective days. But nothing actually *happens* after the one Red Hook girl disappears in the East River underneath an under-appreciated and unforgiving Red Hook sky. (But not before we flash back to one Red Hook afternoon when the 2 girls cut school and strolled - ON FOOT - from Red Hook to the tip of Bay Ridge by the Verrazano, *AND THEN TO CONEY ISLAND* in what wound up being about 2 or 3 hours' time. Did the Universe fold over itself near Gravesend?)
The attempt at "Red Hook ghetto speak" (there are Red Hook housing projects nearby) leads me to believe the author grew up in Idaho and is drawing her references based on a couple episodes of In Living Color. A barely-lovable Red Hook scamp from the projects yearns for more. How original? (He was the most likable character in the book, though.)
Dear Author: If a Red Hook teenager gets on a Red Hook subway, we do not need a play-by-play of each stop passed and street crossed to believe that you "know" Brooklyn. YES WE GET IT. It takes place in BROOKLYN! Please LORD MAKE IT STOP! If I take back the "Idaho" comment will you stop name-dropping streets, landmarks, neighborhoods and subway stops and just tell us the damn story??
Without the words "Red Hook" and "skyline" the book would be 200 pages shorter in length and probably readable.
So many enthusiastic reviews for this book, so perhaps there's something I just didn't "get". I rolled my non-Red-Hook eyes so much at every redundant Red Hook reference that people were asking me "why are you still reading it then?"
I said "You're right! Life's too short."
And that's exactly what I yelled when I threw this Red Hook book out my Manhattan window onto the bustling Manhattan street below.
May 13, 2014
It's been months since I last reviewed anything. I'll might be a little rusty, but here I go I'll give it a shot.
This is the book that I wanted Jonathan Lethem's novel about Sunnyside to be, or that book about Woodside that I read recently but haven't actually added here to goodreads yet. A love song to a place in all of its beauty, awfulness, grime and shit. I'm not all that familiar with Red Hook, I'm fairly certain I've been there a couple of times (is this the neighborhood of Last Exit to Brooklyn?), I think I bought half of the bookshelves in my room from the Ikea there but that isn't really anything to do with the neighborhood--just the gentrification that is knocking at the doors in this novel.
Two girls take a raft out on to the East River on one of those suffocatingly disgusting hot summer nights that make you wish you were anywhere but NYC in the heat. Something happens and one girl is found the next morning washed up on the shore and the other is missing.
This begins the story which weaves between the white girl who was found, a loner kid from the 'houses' (projects), the privileged upper class gone to seed music teacher who finds the girl and the Mideastern descent bodega owner who gets the 'scoop' on the whole story and dreams of creating a vibrant community with his store as something of a focal point.
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I wasn't as in love with it as some people were, but I think the magical realism of the book threw me a little bit. It worked, it just sort of threw me for a bit of a loop (not nearly as badly as as the super-hero-realism of Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude did though (although let's just forget that part of that novel and remember it as a near perfect book up until those problematic parts)).
I'm definitely interested in seeing what else this author has in store for us.
Ok, this was a bit short. Maybe I'll get back in the groove of reviewing soon.
This is the book that I wanted Jonathan Lethem's novel about Sunnyside to be, or that book about Woodside that I read recently but haven't actually added here to goodreads yet. A love song to a place in all of its beauty, awfulness, grime and shit. I'm not all that familiar with Red Hook, I'm fairly certain I've been there a couple of times (is this the neighborhood of Last Exit to Brooklyn?), I think I bought half of the bookshelves in my room from the Ikea there but that isn't really anything to do with the neighborhood--just the gentrification that is knocking at the doors in this novel.
Two girls take a raft out on to the East River on one of those suffocatingly disgusting hot summer nights that make you wish you were anywhere but NYC in the heat. Something happens and one girl is found the next morning washed up on the shore and the other is missing.
This begins the story which weaves between the white girl who was found, a loner kid from the 'houses' (projects), the privileged upper class gone to seed music teacher who finds the girl and the Mideastern descent bodega owner who gets the 'scoop' on the whole story and dreams of creating a vibrant community with his store as something of a focal point.
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I wasn't as in love with it as some people were, but I think the magical realism of the book threw me a little bit. It worked, it just sort of threw me for a bit of a loop (not nearly as badly as as the super-hero-realism of Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude did though (although let's just forget that part of that novel and remember it as a near perfect book up until those problematic parts)).
I'm definitely interested in seeing what else this author has in store for us.
Ok, this was a bit short. Maybe I'll get back in the groove of reviewing soon.
July 1, 2013
I am familiar with the concept of an "urban opera," which is why I chose to read this book. Richard Price and Karin Fossum are masters at this genre. Like VISITATION STREET, it often starts as a murder/police procedural as a trigger. Then, the narrative at hand observes the effect of the murder on a town, and its people. Often, the murder recedes somewhat as other forces--such as the psychology of the town's inhabitants and a rendering of the town itself as a character--begin to bloom. So far, so good, as VISITATION STREET promises to deliver a similar type of narrative.
Red Hook, a sketchy area of Brooklyn, is a town of struggling blue-collar workers, modest bodega owners, and also various losers. Beneath the surface is a racial tension that is precariously kept at bay. One summer night, two white fifteen-year-old girls, Val and June, take a rubber raft out on the harbor to float under the moonlight. The next morning, Val is found with a head injury, but June has disappeared. This is the trigger that opens the story.
The rest of the novel observes and explores a select number of inhabitants that all have a tenuous connection to Val, although none of them are friends or family (well, the family connections are rather superficial). June's disappearance is the vehicle for an exploration of Red Hook, as the town burgeons into a character, made up of many characters who are isolated from each other, but desperately trying to connect.
"A chorus of new voices...They are rough and eroded. They sound like the ache of the wind in a charred forest, the rattle of a can rolling down an empty street, the whisper of dust in a gutted building--hollow, noises unaccustomed to an audience. They suggest a loneliness worse than pain."
The prose is quite lovely sometimes. However, the construction/architecture of the story itself tried too hard without really having much lift-off. There is certainly a lot of potential and ambition here, but the threads that the author uses to connect her characters and events are inorganic.
The characterizations are insubstantial, except for the Lebanese bodega owner, who deserves his own novel. He was sharply drawn with fine nuances, and I was engaged with him as the community's epicenter of information. But much of the interaction and dialogue between characters are contrived. It is difficult to be specific without spoilers, but I will say that, rather than depicting authentic relationships, it reads as if chain-assembled. I felt that the author had a fixed idea of how she wanted this to play out, and forced her characters in place.
Pochoda over-explains in order to cement the weak network of individuals to each other. Whenever a character does something morally ambiguous, she subsequently goes into a breathy explanation instead of trusting the reader to comprehend (a pitfall of some debut novelists). And any time a scene, event, or character steps into enigmatic territory, Pochoda sabotages the tension by giving the reader too much information directly afterwards.
Another problem I had was with the tone, which derailed the intended atmospherics of the town itself. I wanted to be haunted by the ghost metaphors, but they were too underdeveloped and overstated. And, when the author took it one step further, and onerously dropped in the ghosts themselves, I wanted to slam the book down in disgust. However, Pochoda's graceful writing made it possible for me to finish. I hope that her next book will have the ebullience and believability that, like June, were missing in this one. This is one of those rare novels that, given a strong director, could be a better movie than the book.
Red Hook, a sketchy area of Brooklyn, is a town of struggling blue-collar workers, modest bodega owners, and also various losers. Beneath the surface is a racial tension that is precariously kept at bay. One summer night, two white fifteen-year-old girls, Val and June, take a rubber raft out on the harbor to float under the moonlight. The next morning, Val is found with a head injury, but June has disappeared. This is the trigger that opens the story.
The rest of the novel observes and explores a select number of inhabitants that all have a tenuous connection to Val, although none of them are friends or family (well, the family connections are rather superficial). June's disappearance is the vehicle for an exploration of Red Hook, as the town burgeons into a character, made up of many characters who are isolated from each other, but desperately trying to connect.
"A chorus of new voices...They are rough and eroded. They sound like the ache of the wind in a charred forest, the rattle of a can rolling down an empty street, the whisper of dust in a gutted building--hollow, noises unaccustomed to an audience. They suggest a loneliness worse than pain."
The prose is quite lovely sometimes. However, the construction/architecture of the story itself tried too hard without really having much lift-off. There is certainly a lot of potential and ambition here, but the threads that the author uses to connect her characters and events are inorganic.
The characterizations are insubstantial, except for the Lebanese bodega owner, who deserves his own novel. He was sharply drawn with fine nuances, and I was engaged with him as the community's epicenter of information. But much of the interaction and dialogue between characters are contrived. It is difficult to be specific without spoilers, but I will say that, rather than depicting authentic relationships, it reads as if chain-assembled. I felt that the author had a fixed idea of how she wanted this to play out, and forced her characters in place.
Pochoda over-explains in order to cement the weak network of individuals to each other. Whenever a character does something morally ambiguous, she subsequently goes into a breathy explanation instead of trusting the reader to comprehend (a pitfall of some debut novelists). And any time a scene, event, or character steps into enigmatic territory, Pochoda sabotages the tension by giving the reader too much information directly afterwards.
Another problem I had was with the tone, which derailed the intended atmospherics of the town itself. I wanted to be haunted by the ghost metaphors, but they were too underdeveloped and overstated. And, when the author took it one step further, and onerously dropped in the ghosts themselves, I wanted to slam the book down in disgust. However, Pochoda's graceful writing made it possible for me to finish. I hope that her next book will have the ebullience and believability that, like June, were missing in this one. This is one of those rare novels that, given a strong director, could be a better movie than the book.
July 28, 2022
Located on a peninsula in southwestern corner of Brooklyn, the declining area of Red Hook juts into the Upper New York Bay. It’s a place somewhat estranged from elsewhere, with the subway line terminating some distance shy of this neighbourhood. With its shipyards, pre-Civil War warehouses and a large public housing development, known locally as The Houses, it all gives of a somewhat intimidating vibe. Here we meet a range of characters who inhabit this place, including:
- two teenage girls with adventure in mind planning to float out from the docks on their pink plastic raft
- a young man starting to think about college but who is also mourning his father who was killed by a bullet whilst sat outside one of the houses
- a shop owner who treks to his store everyday from elsewhere in the borough and is ever hopeful that this neighbourhood will rise again
- a graffiti artist who lives rough in the area that he decorates with his work whilst keeping a wary eye on what’s going on around him
- a music teacher who aspired to greater things but now finds himself working with a class who have no interest in what he has to say
All of these, and others, will interact in the course of this densely claustrophobic story. Each of their lives will be changed by events and by the people they meet. It’s not a happy tale, but I did find it morbidly addictive, as one setback seemed to follow another on the grimy and threatening streets of this forbidding place. Will the trapped find freedom, will the lost find a home? In truth, some will find something better, others will not.
I’ve read a couple of novels from this author before (Wonder Valley and These Women) and I really enjoyed both of them. This is a darker piece and yet it really has something to say about people and the challenges that life throws up. And like her other books, it’s just so well written. It’s a book to savour, to make you think and to allow you to appreciate a very fine piece of writing indeed.
- two teenage girls with adventure in mind planning to float out from the docks on their pink plastic raft
- a young man starting to think about college but who is also mourning his father who was killed by a bullet whilst sat outside one of the houses
- a shop owner who treks to his store everyday from elsewhere in the borough and is ever hopeful that this neighbourhood will rise again
- a graffiti artist who lives rough in the area that he decorates with his work whilst keeping a wary eye on what’s going on around him
- a music teacher who aspired to greater things but now finds himself working with a class who have no interest in what he has to say
All of these, and others, will interact in the course of this densely claustrophobic story. Each of their lives will be changed by events and by the people they meet. It’s not a happy tale, but I did find it morbidly addictive, as one setback seemed to follow another on the grimy and threatening streets of this forbidding place. Will the trapped find freedom, will the lost find a home? In truth, some will find something better, others will not.
I’ve read a couple of novels from this author before (Wonder Valley and These Women) and I really enjoyed both of them. This is a darker piece and yet it really has something to say about people and the challenges that life throws up. And like her other books, it’s just so well written. It’s a book to savour, to make you think and to allow you to appreciate a very fine piece of writing indeed.
March 5, 2018
June and Val are 15 year olds spending yet another boring summer in Red Hook, Brooklyn. On one hot night they decide to go for a float on a raft in the East River. Val ends up washed ashore, but June remains missing.
Word to the wise – don’t attempt to read this if you’re going to be subjected to a lot of distractions (i.e., don’t start it on the eve of the first day of school). Ivy Pochoda truly PAINTS the scene with her words. While Visitation Street is categorized as a mystery – loyalists to the whodunit may find themselves disappointed. Yes, there is the undercurrent of “what happened to June”, but the goings on of the neighborhood and its vivid cast of characters are the main story.
The picture painted by Pochoda is so vivid that I can immediately picture it as a movie - reminiscent of films like Sleepers and Gone Baby Gone. You know the type – filmed with either a grainy texture or in shadows to let you know you’re not in the best part of town. A cast of characters as plentiful and intriguing as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (complete with a vivacious drag queen and someone who communes with the dead) that can be played by not-so-famous actors because the script is JUST. THAT. GOOD.
What could be considered information overload in some books, somehow is absolutely necessary in Visitation Street. You need to know every microscopic detail of the neighborhood and the people who live there in order to feel the pulse of this novel. Pochoda TAKES YOU to Red Hook (and the banter of chatty children who should be going to bed will yank you RIGHT BACK to reality so find yourself a little hidey-hole in which to read so the vision isn’t broken).
Word to the wise – don’t attempt to read this if you’re going to be subjected to a lot of distractions (i.e., don’t start it on the eve of the first day of school). Ivy Pochoda truly PAINTS the scene with her words. While Visitation Street is categorized as a mystery – loyalists to the whodunit may find themselves disappointed. Yes, there is the undercurrent of “what happened to June”, but the goings on of the neighborhood and its vivid cast of characters are the main story.
The picture painted by Pochoda is so vivid that I can immediately picture it as a movie - reminiscent of films like Sleepers and Gone Baby Gone. You know the type – filmed with either a grainy texture or in shadows to let you know you’re not in the best part of town. A cast of characters as plentiful and intriguing as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (complete with a vivacious drag queen and someone who communes with the dead) that can be played by not-so-famous actors because the script is JUST. THAT. GOOD.
What could be considered information overload in some books, somehow is absolutely necessary in Visitation Street. You need to know every microscopic detail of the neighborhood and the people who live there in order to feel the pulse of this novel. Pochoda TAKES YOU to Red Hook (and the banter of chatty children who should be going to bed will yank you RIGHT BACK to reality so find yourself a little hidey-hole in which to read so the vision isn’t broken).
September 3, 2013
Every time I finish a book, I read some of the reviews written on this site. Without fail, almost every review praises the book and recaps the story. Did any of these readers go to school? Seriously!! It's maddening.
All I can say positively about this book is that the author can write. Her description and narrative passages are first rate and she has an extremely well developed sense of style and characterization. Unfortunately, perhaps only for a small number of readers, myself included, this is not enough. Somewhere, in a successful novel, there must be development of plot. Character is not enough if plot is sacrificed.
The premise of this novel is alarming, but unfortunately, so is the execution of plot. It is mind numbingly slow and boring. What a shame for the few of us who get more out of reading than summarizing the plot and saying that every book we read is great.
All I can say positively about this book is that the author can write. Her description and narrative passages are first rate and she has an extremely well developed sense of style and characterization. Unfortunately, perhaps only for a small number of readers, myself included, this is not enough. Somewhere, in a successful novel, there must be development of plot. Character is not enough if plot is sacrificed.
The premise of this novel is alarming, but unfortunately, so is the execution of plot. It is mind numbingly slow and boring. What a shame for the few of us who get more out of reading than summarizing the plot and saying that every book we read is great.
December 9, 2016
One word sums this book up for me: MEH!
Two best friends- June & Val- sneak out to get into mischief, and find themselves on the wrong side of a pink raft out in the River. Val survives and has to live with what happened to her best friend June, who is missing. Into some additional delinquent characters- some race issues and you've got the outline for this book. The only interesting character was Gloria- who had psychic abilities, and I found her easily my favorite. You can't always judge a character by their intro, and the whole book takes a couple of unimpressive turns. Read this one to finish up a challenge, and it wasn't terrible-- but one I'm likely to forget.
Two best friends- June & Val- sneak out to get into mischief, and find themselves on the wrong side of a pink raft out in the River. Val survives and has to live with what happened to her best friend June, who is missing. Into some additional delinquent characters- some race issues and you've got the outline for this book. The only interesting character was Gloria- who had psychic abilities, and I found her easily my favorite. You can't always judge a character by their intro, and the whole book takes a couple of unimpressive turns. Read this one to finish up a challenge, and it wasn't terrible-- but one I'm likely to forget.
June 28, 2023
3 Stars
September 12, 2013
I Don't Want to Visit This Street
This was a book club read that never grabbed me emotionally, which made it difficult for me to finish. But I did want to see the resolution of the mystery, so I plodded through.
Valerie is a fifteen-year-old who lives in Red Hook -- an impoverished harbor town within sight of New York City. She and her friend June grow restless on a hot summer night and take a flimsy raft out onto the water.
Cree is a young man (19ish?) who also is restless, and he follows the girls' floating journey with fascination. Cree's father was killed in a neighborhood shooting years ago, and his mother now talks to the dead. He has dreams of attending college but worries about his mother and his family making it without him. Although sensing a presence watching him that night, Cree jumps in the water to join the girls, but the swift current blocks his advance and he loses sight of them.
Jonathan is a music teacher alcoholic who stumbles upon Valerie's injured body the next morning and brings her to the owner of a local convenience store: Hafi. Jonathan and Hafi get her to the hospital.
But where's June? What happened to her?
The story weaves together the lives of Red Hook residents -- White, Black, Latino, and Muslim. It's gritty and raw, and well written. It deftly explores the gray of humanity. But I have two complaints:
1) Visitation Street is mired in depression, with no sense of hope.
2) I didn't emotionally connect with the characters.
This book has received positive critical reviews, so you may enjoy it more than I did.
This was a book club read that never grabbed me emotionally, which made it difficult for me to finish. But I did want to see the resolution of the mystery, so I plodded through.
Valerie is a fifteen-year-old who lives in Red Hook -- an impoverished harbor town within sight of New York City. She and her friend June grow restless on a hot summer night and take a flimsy raft out onto the water.
Cree is a young man (19ish?) who also is restless, and he follows the girls' floating journey with fascination. Cree's father was killed in a neighborhood shooting years ago, and his mother now talks to the dead. He has dreams of attending college but worries about his mother and his family making it without him. Although sensing a presence watching him that night, Cree jumps in the water to join the girls, but the swift current blocks his advance and he loses sight of them.
Jonathan is a music teacher alcoholic who stumbles upon Valerie's injured body the next morning and brings her to the owner of a local convenience store: Hafi. Jonathan and Hafi get her to the hospital.
But where's June? What happened to her?
The story weaves together the lives of Red Hook residents -- White, Black, Latino, and Muslim. It's gritty and raw, and well written. It deftly explores the gray of humanity. But I have two complaints:
1) Visitation Street is mired in depression, with no sense of hope.
2) I didn't emotionally connect with the characters.
This book has received positive critical reviews, so you may enjoy it more than I did.
August 24, 2020
There are two things to note before reading this book:
1) this is an urban opera (I thought of it as a soap-opera figuring they're the same thing)
2) if you know Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, what did you think of that?
Because this book is by no means a thriller. It doesn't even come close to a mystery.
That all said, for its prose, imagery and (as the summary put it) pscyholoical insight to explore a cast of solitary souls its a very very good read. Although I rarely recommend it, I think that reading this book over the span of several days made it better.
It's a little hard to comment on this book because not a lot happened, but there was a lot of development in each of the characters. I think it was a very interesting read, kind of like the Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson. It depicted an isolated small town and doesn't bother romanticizing the details. I can't say I recommend this book, but it's definitely worth a read if you're interesting.
1) this is an urban opera (I thought of it as a soap-opera figuring they're the same thing)
2) if you know Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, what did you think of that?
Because this book is by no means a thriller. It doesn't even come close to a mystery.
That all said, for its prose, imagery and (as the summary put it) pscyholoical insight to explore a cast of solitary souls its a very very good read. Although I rarely recommend it, I think that reading this book over the span of several days made it better.
It's a little hard to comment on this book because not a lot happened, but there was a lot of development in each of the characters. I think it was a very interesting read, kind of like the Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson. It depicted an isolated small town and doesn't bother romanticizing the details. I can't say I recommend this book, but it's definitely worth a read if you're interesting.
September 17, 2013
In all honesty, I could simply reduce the length of my review of Visitation Street to a stream of complimentary adjectives, such is the mesmeric beauty of this book.
The first notable quality of this novel is the way that it encompasses not only the best of contemporary American fiction in its depth of issues and characterisation, but also how it threads into the central narrative a compelling crime strand. Focussing on the New York shore-dwelling community of Red Hook, the book opens with two young girls embarking on a trip to the shoreline armed with a raft in the hope of adventure. Only one makes it back to safety, with the crux of the story then revolving around the disappearance of the other. From this initial mystery, Pochoda weaves a multi-layered narrative, perfectly constructing the lives of this run-down community and the minutiae of their personal troubles. Each character is filled with a vibrancy and clarity of depiction, that truly reflects the socio-economic pressures of life within their community be they a humble store owner, a struggling music teacher or a youth attempting to rebuild his life in the shadow of past sins. Pochoda captures the themes of poverty and race with pinpoint precision, and imbues the book with protagonists who will draw your empathy or dislike in equal measure. There are scenes within the book that will simply transfix you in their brutal simplicity and the rhythmical and utterly authentic dialogue sings from the pages.
Having achieved such an attention to detail as previously mentioned, I feared that the central crime of the piece would somehow get lost in the meticulous attention to these other aspects, but my fears were dispelled as the novel progressed and the truth surrounding the girl's ill-fated river trip, and a young man's discovery of the real events behind his father's murder come to light. Both these plotlines unfold beautifully in the course of the book as you become more and more immersed in this unique but blighted community of people getting on with their lives in the best way that they can. It is little wonder that Dennis Lehane felt so compelled to trumpet this book to the wider reading community, and on the strength of this novel Ivy Pochoda will certainly be a writer to watch in the future. A remarkable read and I have no qualms of labelling this as one of the best books I have read this year.
The first notable quality of this novel is the way that it encompasses not only the best of contemporary American fiction in its depth of issues and characterisation, but also how it threads into the central narrative a compelling crime strand. Focussing on the New York shore-dwelling community of Red Hook, the book opens with two young girls embarking on a trip to the shoreline armed with a raft in the hope of adventure. Only one makes it back to safety, with the crux of the story then revolving around the disappearance of the other. From this initial mystery, Pochoda weaves a multi-layered narrative, perfectly constructing the lives of this run-down community and the minutiae of their personal troubles. Each character is filled with a vibrancy and clarity of depiction, that truly reflects the socio-economic pressures of life within their community be they a humble store owner, a struggling music teacher or a youth attempting to rebuild his life in the shadow of past sins. Pochoda captures the themes of poverty and race with pinpoint precision, and imbues the book with protagonists who will draw your empathy or dislike in equal measure. There are scenes within the book that will simply transfix you in their brutal simplicity and the rhythmical and utterly authentic dialogue sings from the pages.
Having achieved such an attention to detail as previously mentioned, I feared that the central crime of the piece would somehow get lost in the meticulous attention to these other aspects, but my fears were dispelled as the novel progressed and the truth surrounding the girl's ill-fated river trip, and a young man's discovery of the real events behind his father's murder come to light. Both these plotlines unfold beautifully in the course of the book as you become more and more immersed in this unique but blighted community of people getting on with their lives in the best way that they can. It is little wonder that Dennis Lehane felt so compelled to trumpet this book to the wider reading community, and on the strength of this novel Ivy Pochoda will certainly be a writer to watch in the future. A remarkable read and I have no qualms of labelling this as one of the best books I have read this year.
September 6, 2019
I had this book on my shelves for a few years and finally picked it up to bring on a recent road trip. I had bought it after reading a spectacular review by Will Byrnes here on GR. It is a story about Red Hook in Brooklyn, as it faces an uncertain future. Red Hook is a peninsula on the Upper New York Bay. For a long time, it was a thriving area full of ships, warehouses, longshoremen, and all people and things connected to these enterprises. Those things are all ghosts now, and represented by hulking wrecks that remain. Gentrification is pushing its way into the area. Pochoda, who grew up in Brooklyn, tells this story through characters who have are part of the long existing, working class population. While there are references to the incoming gentrifiers who are slowly making incursions into this end of Red Hook, they are not part of the story.
The story revolves around an incident in which two fifteen-year-old girls go out onto the bay on a hot summer night on a small raft. Only one comes back. The girls are white, working class, and students at a local Catholic high school. As children, they played with African American kids, residents of the nearby housing project, but as they matured, their parents created reasons to keep them apart. The teenaged characters Val, survivor of the rafting accident, Monique, Val’s childhood friend, and Cree, whose father, a law enforcement officer, was shot and killed in the projects, are compelling characters. Fadi, the Lebanese bodega owner, and Jonathan, the down-and-out music teacher at the Catholic High School, are two other critical figures in the story. A mysterious tagger, a 20-something, African American male who lives in an encampment of homeless people, Ren, appears in the community. Ren becomes a central figure, and very important to Fadi and Cree.
The writing is often stunning. The sense of place is among the strongest I have experienced in a novel. The novel is imbued with melancholy. The young residents dream of leaving, but are without resources to do so. For one of them, Cree, even the idea of going to community college in another part of Brooklyn would represent an escape. This is a community that has a relentless hold on those who grow up there. This story has been compared to Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River. I saw the film and can see parallels in the two. I also lived in Boston for 20 years, and am very familiar with the territory Lehane describes. Will Byrnes begins his review of the book on GR with this : “If Ivy Pochoda never writes another book, this one would be enough to keep her name on the lips of readers for decades to come.” I think that says it all. Highly recommended.
The story revolves around an incident in which two fifteen-year-old girls go out onto the bay on a hot summer night on a small raft. Only one comes back. The girls are white, working class, and students at a local Catholic high school. As children, they played with African American kids, residents of the nearby housing project, but as they matured, their parents created reasons to keep them apart. The teenaged characters Val, survivor of the rafting accident, Monique, Val’s childhood friend, and Cree, whose father, a law enforcement officer, was shot and killed in the projects, are compelling characters. Fadi, the Lebanese bodega owner, and Jonathan, the down-and-out music teacher at the Catholic High School, are two other critical figures in the story. A mysterious tagger, a 20-something, African American male who lives in an encampment of homeless people, Ren, appears in the community. Ren becomes a central figure, and very important to Fadi and Cree.
The writing is often stunning. The sense of place is among the strongest I have experienced in a novel. The novel is imbued with melancholy. The young residents dream of leaving, but are without resources to do so. For one of them, Cree, even the idea of going to community college in another part of Brooklyn would represent an escape. This is a community that has a relentless hold on those who grow up there. This story has been compared to Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River. I saw the film and can see parallels in the two. I also lived in Boston for 20 years, and am very familiar with the territory Lehane describes. Will Byrnes begins his review of the book on GR with this : “If Ivy Pochoda never writes another book, this one would be enough to keep her name on the lips of readers for decades to come.” I think that says it all. Highly recommended.
November 20, 2022
3 Stars for Visitation Street (audiobook) by Ivy Pochoda read by Ray Porter.
I normally like stories set in New York. This book like it’s characters are stuck in this one marginalized neighborhood. The characters aren’t good or bad, they’re just getting by. Something bad happens and now we have to try and figure out who all is lying.
I normally like stories set in New York. This book like it’s characters are stuck in this one marginalized neighborhood. The characters aren’t good or bad, they’re just getting by. Something bad happens and now we have to try and figure out who all is lying.
April 28, 2015
Gritty and grim, Visitation Street offers a look into Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood and inhabitants. The opening chapters grab your attention with beautiful prose and a mystery which begins when two teen girls take a pink raft out on the East River one night and only one returns--you could say really the shell of one returns. What happened exactly remains unknown for a time.
Meanwhile, we get to know the large cast of characters, all of whom exist day after day in the neighborhood, children and parents, store owners and bartenders, drug dealer and drunks, whites on one side and blacks on the other, intermingling and co-existing with other ethnics. All have sorrow, guilt, and ghosts in their pasts -- ghosts in the present too which won't leave them alone and which affect where and how they live.
Red Hook of course is the main character, how certain elements have declined; and now with a new cruiseline docking at its pier, hope for the future. I would say that Jonathan's story interested me the most, as I worried about how others perceived his actions. But really I think that many of the characters will remain with me in the days to come.
Meanwhile, we get to know the large cast of characters, all of whom exist day after day in the neighborhood, children and parents, store owners and bartenders, drug dealer and drunks, whites on one side and blacks on the other, intermingling and co-existing with other ethnics. All have sorrow, guilt, and ghosts in their pasts -- ghosts in the present too which won't leave them alone and which affect where and how they live.
Red Hook of course is the main character, how certain elements have declined; and now with a new cruiseline docking at its pier, hope for the future. I would say that Jonathan's story interested me the most, as I worried about how others perceived his actions. But really I think that many of the characters will remain with me in the days to come.
February 8, 2019
Una noche de verano, June Giatto y Val Marino, de 15 años, salen a navegar en una balsa hinchable. Al día siguiente encuentran a Val, casi ahogada. No recuerda nada. De la balsa y de June no hay ni rastro.
Ese es el punto de partida, el misterio a resolver, y a través de las historias personales de los habitantes del barrio llegaremos a conocer la verdad, pero no es de eso de lo que trata la novela. Visitation Street es el retrato de Red Hook, una zona portuaria de Brooklyn, decadente, marginal, deprimente y sin futuro. De conflictos raciales que aumentan con la desaparición de Val, de drogas, de secretos, de vidas sin esperanza y de sueños por cumplir.
Visitation Street es una novela de personajes, una historia al más puro estilo Mystic River, con la que ha sido comparada miles de veces. Por una vez la comparación es un acierto, pero no le hace ningún favor. A pesar de que los personajes están bien perfilados, he encontrado la historia algo insulsa, con poco ritmo al querer la autora justificar y explicar cada una de las acciones de sus personajes.
Ese es el punto de partida, el misterio a resolver, y a través de las historias personales de los habitantes del barrio llegaremos a conocer la verdad, pero no es de eso de lo que trata la novela. Visitation Street es el retrato de Red Hook, una zona portuaria de Brooklyn, decadente, marginal, deprimente y sin futuro. De conflictos raciales que aumentan con la desaparición de Val, de drogas, de secretos, de vidas sin esperanza y de sueños por cumplir.
Visitation Street es una novela de personajes, una historia al más puro estilo Mystic River, con la que ha sido comparada miles de veces. Por una vez la comparación es un acierto, pero no le hace ningún favor. A pesar de que los personajes están bien perfilados, he encontrado la historia algo insulsa, con poco ritmo al querer la autora justificar y explicar cada una de las acciones de sus personajes.
July 13, 2013
Oh the humanity
This book is marketed as a mystery and an argument can be made for that designation though it’s not your usual who dun it. There’s a lively mix of people in Red Hook New York consisting of Italians and those who live in the nearby projects who are mostly African American. There’s a class system at work that few can breach and sadly only a few people WANT to try and integrate. The story is told from Fadi’s viewpoint. He’s a Lebanese immigrant who runs a neighborhood convenience store that straddles the disparate factions. Fadi doesn’t miss much that goes on. He even writes a paper that chronicles his observations. There are those in the neighborhood who wish he’d be less observant.
Tragedy scares Red Hook when two girls go missing. They were last seen riding a pink inflatable raft out on the Hudson. Outwardly everyone wants the girls to turn up alive and well but underneath racial issues brew especially when the cops hit the projects looking for someone to blame. The best of this book is the cast of characters that Pochoda creates. They really come alive with their longings, their mix of talent and dreams, and their relationships with one another. There’s also a strong undercurrent of the supernatural though it never goes too far. When the outside world intrudes on Red Hook things begin to change both in a positive way and a negative way. The people of Visitation Street aren’t soon forgotten.
This review is based on an advance readers copy supplied by the publisher.
(Disclaimer given per FTC requirement.)
Goodreads friends if you happen to see my reviews on Amazon please do NOT vote on them.
This book is marketed as a mystery and an argument can be made for that designation though it’s not your usual who dun it. There’s a lively mix of people in Red Hook New York consisting of Italians and those who live in the nearby projects who are mostly African American. There’s a class system at work that few can breach and sadly only a few people WANT to try and integrate. The story is told from Fadi’s viewpoint. He’s a Lebanese immigrant who runs a neighborhood convenience store that straddles the disparate factions. Fadi doesn’t miss much that goes on. He even writes a paper that chronicles his observations. There are those in the neighborhood who wish he’d be less observant.
Tragedy scares Red Hook when two girls go missing. They were last seen riding a pink inflatable raft out on the Hudson. Outwardly everyone wants the girls to turn up alive and well but underneath racial issues brew especially when the cops hit the projects looking for someone to blame. The best of this book is the cast of characters that Pochoda creates. They really come alive with their longings, their mix of talent and dreams, and their relationships with one another. There’s also a strong undercurrent of the supernatural though it never goes too far. When the outside world intrudes on Red Hook things begin to change both in a positive way and a negative way. The people of Visitation Street aren’t soon forgotten.
This review is based on an advance readers copy supplied by the publisher.
(Disclaimer given per FTC requirement.)
Goodreads friends if you happen to see my reviews on Amazon please do NOT vote on them.
January 23, 2013
One hot summer night two bored 15 year old girls in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn decide to take their pink inflatable raft on its maiden voyage. The Manhattan skyline is beautiful, the water doesn't look so dirty in the dark and the moon is beaming. But there are dangerous undercurrents and only one girl returns.
The story is told from several points of view and the neighborhood of Red Hook is described so vividly it becomes a character too. Great characters, striking images, good dialogue. Recommended for readers who like George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane (this is the second title under his imprint, following The Cutting Season), and Laura Lippman.
The story is told from several points of view and the neighborhood of Red Hook is described so vividly it becomes a character too. Great characters, striking images, good dialogue. Recommended for readers who like George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane (this is the second title under his imprint, following The Cutting Season), and Laura Lippman.
July 28, 2013
I'd rate this 4.5 stars.
Dennis Lehane is one of my favorite authors. While I've tended to love his grittier books more than his recent forays into historically-tinged fiction, I absolutely love the way he writes and the way he creates and develops his characters.
Lehane recently started his own imprint at HarperCollins Publishers, called (what else?) Dennis Lehane Books, and Ivy Pochoda's terrific Visitation Street is the first book released under this imprint. It's truly a book worthy of its impresario, and I believe it signals the arrival of a fantastic writer with a tremendous amount of promise.
Valerie Marino and June Giatto are 15-year-old best friends growing up in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood. It's summer and the two are bored, and starting to feel the pull of maturity separating them, as June wants to be treated like an adult and hang out with boys, while Val is still content to go on doing the same things they always have. But Val doesn't want to lose June, so in an effort to seem more mature and brave, she encourages June to accompany her on a late night ride on the East River, using a pink rubber raft. On the water that humid night, something happens, and only Val returns, washed up on the shore under a pier, injured but alive.
June's disappearance lights a spark among those in the neighborhood, for different reasons. Jonathan Sprouse, a disillusioned musician-turned-music teacher who rescued Val from underneath the pier, is haunted by his own demons and the questions and aftereffects his heroic act leaves behind. Fadi, the Lebanese owner of a neighborhood bodega, fancies his store as the community center of Red Hook, and hopes June's disappearance and his attempts to bring the community together around it will help his business and his sense of belonging. Cree, a friend of Val and June's, dreams of getting away from Red Hook but finds himself rooted there because of his mother's inability to let go of his father's memory—and his own pursuits leave him vulnerable to suspicion. Ren, a talented graffiti artist with a mysterious past, is determined to try and insulate Cree from suspiccion—for mysterious reasons.
But of course, the person most affected by June's disappearance is Val. Unable to remember (or perhaps acknowledge) what happened on the river that night, afraid that taking responsibility might mean June really did die, she starts acting out in strange and potentially dangerous ways, if for no other reason than to feel a part of something again, to feel that someone else other than June cares about her.
The characters all collide around the events of that summer, a summer that sees the Red Hook neighborhood struggle with potential gentrification and the arrival of the first cruise ships to the area, as well as the usual distrust and dissatisfaction that occur among racial, cultural, and socioeconomic lines. It's a story about friendship, relationships, and how important it is to come to terms with your own demons, as well as how you can't always tie yourself to your past and need to move on.
This isn't a mystery per se, in that June's disappearance seems fairly self-explanatory, but the book is more about the events that incident sets into motion. I thought Pochoda did a terrific job setting the story and giving life to her characters, and I really found myself captivated from start to finish. Having read many books that have had similar plots, I worried that Visitation Street might veer into more clichéd territory and was so pleased it didn't. I really flew through the book and actually wanted it to be a little longer, because as is the case with many books I enjoy, I wanted to know what happened next to the characters.
I'm very excited to see what's next for Ivy Pochoda's career, and look forward to seeing the next books to emerge from Dennis Lehane Books. If they're as good as Visitation Street, Lehane may prove himself to be just as successful finding new talent as he is showing off his own.
Dennis Lehane is one of my favorite authors. While I've tended to love his grittier books more than his recent forays into historically-tinged fiction, I absolutely love the way he writes and the way he creates and develops his characters.
Lehane recently started his own imprint at HarperCollins Publishers, called (what else?) Dennis Lehane Books, and Ivy Pochoda's terrific Visitation Street is the first book released under this imprint. It's truly a book worthy of its impresario, and I believe it signals the arrival of a fantastic writer with a tremendous amount of promise.
Valerie Marino and June Giatto are 15-year-old best friends growing up in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood. It's summer and the two are bored, and starting to feel the pull of maturity separating them, as June wants to be treated like an adult and hang out with boys, while Val is still content to go on doing the same things they always have. But Val doesn't want to lose June, so in an effort to seem more mature and brave, she encourages June to accompany her on a late night ride on the East River, using a pink rubber raft. On the water that humid night, something happens, and only Val returns, washed up on the shore under a pier, injured but alive.
June's disappearance lights a spark among those in the neighborhood, for different reasons. Jonathan Sprouse, a disillusioned musician-turned-music teacher who rescued Val from underneath the pier, is haunted by his own demons and the questions and aftereffects his heroic act leaves behind. Fadi, the Lebanese owner of a neighborhood bodega, fancies his store as the community center of Red Hook, and hopes June's disappearance and his attempts to bring the community together around it will help his business and his sense of belonging. Cree, a friend of Val and June's, dreams of getting away from Red Hook but finds himself rooted there because of his mother's inability to let go of his father's memory—and his own pursuits leave him vulnerable to suspicion. Ren, a talented graffiti artist with a mysterious past, is determined to try and insulate Cree from suspiccion—for mysterious reasons.
But of course, the person most affected by June's disappearance is Val. Unable to remember (or perhaps acknowledge) what happened on the river that night, afraid that taking responsibility might mean June really did die, she starts acting out in strange and potentially dangerous ways, if for no other reason than to feel a part of something again, to feel that someone else other than June cares about her.
The characters all collide around the events of that summer, a summer that sees the Red Hook neighborhood struggle with potential gentrification and the arrival of the first cruise ships to the area, as well as the usual distrust and dissatisfaction that occur among racial, cultural, and socioeconomic lines. It's a story about friendship, relationships, and how important it is to come to terms with your own demons, as well as how you can't always tie yourself to your past and need to move on.
This isn't a mystery per se, in that June's disappearance seems fairly self-explanatory, but the book is more about the events that incident sets into motion. I thought Pochoda did a terrific job setting the story and giving life to her characters, and I really found myself captivated from start to finish. Having read many books that have had similar plots, I worried that Visitation Street might veer into more clichéd territory and was so pleased it didn't. I really flew through the book and actually wanted it to be a little longer, because as is the case with many books I enjoy, I wanted to know what happened next to the characters.
I'm very excited to see what's next for Ivy Pochoda's career, and look forward to seeing the next books to emerge from Dennis Lehane Books. If they're as good as Visitation Street, Lehane may prove himself to be just as successful finding new talent as he is showing off his own.
September 7, 2014
Ahhh...dammit, I wish I had liked this book more than I did.
It took me a week to read this 300 page book. That's a telltale sign for me. I just didn't have the urge to pick it up and read. It was almost a chore.
It was difficult for me to care about most of the characters so I didn't feel like rushing to read and turn another page.
And the ending IMHO seemed contrived and forced.
Very unfortunate because I really wanted to like this book and give it five stars. But that just didn't happen. But I liked it, so that's something.
It took me a week to read this 300 page book. That's a telltale sign for me. I just didn't have the urge to pick it up and read. It was almost a chore.
It was difficult for me to care about most of the characters so I didn't feel like rushing to read and turn another page.
And the ending IMHO seemed contrived and forced.
Very unfortunate because I really wanted to like this book and give it five stars. But that just didn't happen. But I liked it, so that's something.
July 23, 2017
3'5 ⭐ Le falta algo de chispa para alcanzar las 4 pero ha sido una buena lectura. http://huellalibrosicc.blogspot.com.e...
August 18, 2013
I picked up Visitation Street to read because it is set in Red Hook, Brooklyn, an area my daughter lived in for a while. I have happy memories of visiting her and her husband in this scrappy little town, and am happy that another friend has just opened a sandwich shop there. I love being able to absorb a story-telling within the perimeters of my own experience, though this story takes place prior to Ikea and Fairway Market moving in to make Red Hook their own.
This book, though, just flattened me. I kept flipping to the dust jacket to see the photo of the clearly young author, amazed at her insight and her talent for portraying a multitude of characters so truthfully. From the young girls involved in the original plot line, to the teacher with so many struggles of his own, to the two young men, Cree and Ren, to Fadi, who owns and runs a Lebanese deli and who so loves Red Hook, I was never disappointed when the point of view in the story switched characters. I wanted to know how each was feeling and doing and thinking and hoping. Quite a feat for any author. This is certainly one of the best books I have read this year, and maybe in several years. I was sorry when it ended, and will be looking for the next Ivy Pochoda book.
This book, though, just flattened me. I kept flipping to the dust jacket to see the photo of the clearly young author, amazed at her insight and her talent for portraying a multitude of characters so truthfully. From the young girls involved in the original plot line, to the teacher with so many struggles of his own, to the two young men, Cree and Ren, to Fadi, who owns and runs a Lebanese deli and who so loves Red Hook, I was never disappointed when the point of view in the story switched characters. I wanted to know how each was feeling and doing and thinking and hoping. Quite a feat for any author. This is certainly one of the best books I have read this year, and maybe in several years. I was sorry when it ended, and will be looking for the next Ivy Pochoda book.
August 12, 2013
Clearly the author cares deeply about bringing Red Hook (a Brooklyn neighborhood) to life. At times the story almost stagnates while she describes in detail the history of the neighborhood, the weather, the characters that fill the bars, projects, houses, and parks. But for some reason, it never really became real for me. I don't know if it's because it's so different from the environment that I live in or grew up in, or because her writing just didn't resonate with me. But since the neighborhood is such an important part of this book - it's the title, basically - and I didn't click with this particular character, the book wasn't all that great for me.
It's marketed as some sort of murder mystery ("On a hot summer night, two girls set out on a raft. The next morning one of them washes up on the shore half dead; the other has vanished. WHAT HAPPENED?!") and it's really not. Um, what happened is that two girls on some sort of raft got into a huge body of water with unknown currents in the dark, on an abandoned waterfront. What do you think might happen? I guess I won't actually say what I assumed happened from the second chapter, since I don't want to spoil it for anyone who actually finds something mysterious in this scenario (besides why anyone would actually put themselves in this particular predicament), but in my mind there was never a mystery. Maybe the exact circumstances surrounding the very specific details of their time in the water and right after aren't known, but that's not really how it was sold.
I'd call this story more of a coming of age story, with a few main characters that undergo transformations (with various levels of believability) throughout this one eventful summer.
I don't know - it wasn't bad, but I guess with all the hype, I'd been expecting more. When I bought this book, Dennis Lehane's name was big in the title, and on the cover. I don't really know what he had to do with any of it, but I think I'm going to go find a Dennis Lehane book and read that; I imagine I'll like it better.
It's marketed as some sort of murder mystery ("On a hot summer night, two girls set out on a raft. The next morning one of them washes up on the shore half dead; the other has vanished. WHAT HAPPENED?!") and it's really not. Um, what happened is that two girls on some sort of raft got into a huge body of water with unknown currents in the dark, on an abandoned waterfront. What do you think might happen? I guess I won't actually say what I assumed happened from the second chapter, since I don't want to spoil it for anyone who actually finds something mysterious in this scenario (besides why anyone would actually put themselves in this particular predicament), but in my mind there was never a mystery. Maybe the exact circumstances surrounding the very specific details of their time in the water and right after aren't known, but that's not really how it was sold.
I'd call this story more of a coming of age story, with a few main characters that undergo transformations (with various levels of believability) throughout this one eventful summer.
I don't know - it wasn't bad, but I guess with all the hype, I'd been expecting more. When I bought this book, Dennis Lehane's name was big in the title, and on the cover. I don't really know what he had to do with any of it, but I think I'm going to go find a Dennis Lehane book and read that; I imagine I'll like it better.
December 30, 2013
It was haunting...not so much the story as the characters themselves. They were complex, believable, tragic, intertwined. You could feel their pain, see the humidity, smell the city, picture the neighborhood, the vacant buildings and the empty lots. Very well-written but not a page-turning thriller...more of a detailed story about the neighborhood and how those living there were connected by tragedy.
March 31, 2014
Too meandering, too slow, I figured out where it was going right away. I wanted more mystery. I suppose if you are from New York/Brooklyn you will like this a lot more than I did.
February 18, 2017
A long time ago, I read an essay on crime fiction by famous author, whose name I cannot remember. They stated that the crime represented a hole rent in the fabric of ordered society... and thus, was a threat to everyone's way of life. The detective pieces together clues and, by solving the puzzle, fills that breach, making the cloth whole again. Which is why, the author postulated, that Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple spend upwards of twenty pages explaining the murder and how they solved it. But in a tame setting, like a drawing room over tea.
In "Visitation Street." Ivy Pochoda writes a masterful crime story. Which starts, like all great mysteries, with a crime the breaches the social order. But instead of creating a classic police procedural, Pochoda shifts the focus to the social order which has been ripped, and how it has impacted the lives of the characters closest to the breach -- all denizens of Red Hook, a port-side Brooklyn neighborhood.
The characters Pachoda creates are manifold and quite believable. There's Cree, a teenage African-American dreamer who lives in the projects whose father, a corrections officer, had been killed years ago during a gang initiation. And his mother, who has "the sight," and speaks with his ghost. And there's Cree's shadow-like protector, Run Down -- AKA Renton Davis -- a homeless black graffiti artist whose social status is even lower than projects-dwellers like Cree. These poor minorities are painted with a depth an compassion that boggles my mind. They are written without urban-fiction tropes. They are all fully realized characters.
Of course, there is always "the other side of the tracks." And Pachoda also gives us some excellent, well-rounded middle-class characters. There are the noble ones, like Fadi, the Lebanese convenience store owner. And constrained, and often small-minded, like the stand-up working class firefighter Pauli. To the cringe-worthy, like Jonathan, a Julliard drop-out cum Catholic high school music teacher who hates his job, and spends his nights drinking and drugging, trying to escape the ghost of a dead mother. Like the poorer housing-project dwellers, these characters are well-drawn with clear motivations.
Pachoda uses many points-of-view in the novel. And she does this effectively. The inner-lives of these people come across as understandable. And yet, despite this divergent cast and shifting story-lines and points-of-view, Pachoda manages to keep the parts together. And the novel functions as an organic whole.
She does this by having the story revolve around a missing girl, June. She was last seen drifting down the river on a raft with her best friend, the fragile, emotional Val. The next morning, Jonathan stumbles upon the nearly-drowned Val, fishes her from the water, and brings her to Fadi's convenience store to call the ambulance. June is missing. When it turns out Cree is among the last to see the girls alive, the police make him their prime suspect. Despite the fact that we know he is innocent. And because of his early involvement, Fadi sets out to become the neighborhood's axis to gather information that would lead to June.
In the end, the mystery is solved. June found. And many pieces fall in place. The once rent fabric of the Red Hook neighborhood becomes, once again, whole. And yet that "wholeness" is an illusion, since Red Hook as it exists is on the verge of being destroyed by gentrification.
In short, "Visitation Street" plays with expectations. But not in the smug way that postmodernists like Paul Auster, whose work I often find dull despite the critical raves, play with expectations. For the postmodernists, it was an exercise in technique. It was cheeky. They gave you mysteries where the clues lead nowhere (like Pynchon in "The Crying of Lot 49"). Or wounded investigators obsessed with texts (like Auster's "New York Trilogy"). Or creative, genre mash-ups (like Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose," who plants a Sherlock Holmes-like detective smack-dab in a medieval monastery.
Unlike these works -- some of which I loved, others of which I hate -- "Visitation Street" is not interested in the postmodern obsession with language -- notably the pointer, or word, which points to an object, reality. Instead, Pachoda is more interested in the humans than ideas. And that, to me is a great thing.
She traces the racial bias that police often employ -- like focusing on Cree too soon, and without evidence. And the plight of urban shadows, like drunks and junkies and petty criminals. Of course, there is the constant threat of violent crime that hangs over many urban neighborhoods, but this is not overdone. The threat is real, but the spotlight is not on the thugs. Instead, the spotlight is on the other 99% of the residents, people who oppose the violence.
And that is what makes the book special. It is at once crime fiction. And yet, literary.
My major problems with the book came when the mystery is solved. Too much is explained by the narrator, not enough left for us to piece together. Unfortunately, I cannot divulge more without spoilers. But it is here, in the last fifty pages, where the literary runs headlong into, and conflicts with, the motivation of whodunit mystery.
Sure, it ties up loose ends. But without a Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes explaining things, the job of hog-tying the story is left to the narrator. And instead of hinting at her character's motivation -- the literary wont -- Pachoda's narrators "tell us" too much.
Too bad. Because, for all its faults, "Visitation Street" is an amazing read. Great characters. Social commentary given without being preachy. And a gritty sense of redemption as characters move off of top-dead-center and live once again, evolving. Sure, some move slow, others fast. But, like the gentrifying neighborhood, change is happening.
Four stars. highly recommended for anyone who likes crime or urban fiction. And since there is a healthy dose or magical realism, notably ghosts, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a more challenging, psychologically "real" type of urban fantasy.
Update 2/18/2017
Currently reading Bruce Springsteen's memoir, "Born to Run." Which got me listening to a lot of Bruce's albums again. And I thought "Visitation Street" read like an early Springsteen album. It's got that gritty, east coast working class vibe.
Though, of course, you cannot dance to it. :-)
In "Visitation Street." Ivy Pochoda writes a masterful crime story. Which starts, like all great mysteries, with a crime the breaches the social order. But instead of creating a classic police procedural, Pochoda shifts the focus to the social order which has been ripped, and how it has impacted the lives of the characters closest to the breach -- all denizens of Red Hook, a port-side Brooklyn neighborhood.
The characters Pachoda creates are manifold and quite believable. There's Cree, a teenage African-American dreamer who lives in the projects whose father, a corrections officer, had been killed years ago during a gang initiation. And his mother, who has "the sight," and speaks with his ghost. And there's Cree's shadow-like protector, Run Down -- AKA Renton Davis -- a homeless black graffiti artist whose social status is even lower than projects-dwellers like Cree. These poor minorities are painted with a depth an compassion that boggles my mind. They are written without urban-fiction tropes. They are all fully realized characters.
Of course, there is always "the other side of the tracks." And Pachoda also gives us some excellent, well-rounded middle-class characters. There are the noble ones, like Fadi, the Lebanese convenience store owner. And constrained, and often small-minded, like the stand-up working class firefighter Pauli. To the cringe-worthy, like Jonathan, a Julliard drop-out cum Catholic high school music teacher who hates his job, and spends his nights drinking and drugging, trying to escape the ghost of a dead mother. Like the poorer housing-project dwellers, these characters are well-drawn with clear motivations.
Pachoda uses many points-of-view in the novel. And she does this effectively. The inner-lives of these people come across as understandable. And yet, despite this divergent cast and shifting story-lines and points-of-view, Pachoda manages to keep the parts together. And the novel functions as an organic whole.
She does this by having the story revolve around a missing girl, June. She was last seen drifting down the river on a raft with her best friend, the fragile, emotional Val. The next morning, Jonathan stumbles upon the nearly-drowned Val, fishes her from the water, and brings her to Fadi's convenience store to call the ambulance. June is missing. When it turns out Cree is among the last to see the girls alive, the police make him their prime suspect. Despite the fact that we know he is innocent. And because of his early involvement, Fadi sets out to become the neighborhood's axis to gather information that would lead to June.
In the end, the mystery is solved. June found. And many pieces fall in place. The once rent fabric of the Red Hook neighborhood becomes, once again, whole. And yet that "wholeness" is an illusion, since Red Hook as it exists is on the verge of being destroyed by gentrification.
In short, "Visitation Street" plays with expectations. But not in the smug way that postmodernists like Paul Auster, whose work I often find dull despite the critical raves, play with expectations. For the postmodernists, it was an exercise in technique. It was cheeky. They gave you mysteries where the clues lead nowhere (like Pynchon in "The Crying of Lot 49"). Or wounded investigators obsessed with texts (like Auster's "New York Trilogy"). Or creative, genre mash-ups (like Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose," who plants a Sherlock Holmes-like detective smack-dab in a medieval monastery.
Unlike these works -- some of which I loved, others of which I hate -- "Visitation Street" is not interested in the postmodern obsession with language -- notably the pointer, or word, which points to an object, reality. Instead, Pachoda is more interested in the humans than ideas. And that, to me is a great thing.
She traces the racial bias that police often employ -- like focusing on Cree too soon, and without evidence. And the plight of urban shadows, like drunks and junkies and petty criminals. Of course, there is the constant threat of violent crime that hangs over many urban neighborhoods, but this is not overdone. The threat is real, but the spotlight is not on the thugs. Instead, the spotlight is on the other 99% of the residents, people who oppose the violence.
And that is what makes the book special. It is at once crime fiction. And yet, literary.
My major problems with the book came when the mystery is solved. Too much is explained by the narrator, not enough left for us to piece together. Unfortunately, I cannot divulge more without spoilers. But it is here, in the last fifty pages, where the literary runs headlong into, and conflicts with, the motivation of whodunit mystery.
Sure, it ties up loose ends. But without a Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes explaining things, the job of hog-tying the story is left to the narrator. And instead of hinting at her character's motivation -- the literary wont -- Pachoda's narrators "tell us" too much.
Too bad. Because, for all its faults, "Visitation Street" is an amazing read. Great characters. Social commentary given without being preachy. And a gritty sense of redemption as characters move off of top-dead-center and live once again, evolving. Sure, some move slow, others fast. But, like the gentrifying neighborhood, change is happening.
Four stars. highly recommended for anyone who likes crime or urban fiction. And since there is a healthy dose or magical realism, notably ghosts, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a more challenging, psychologically "real" type of urban fantasy.
Update 2/18/2017
Currently reading Bruce Springsteen's memoir, "Born to Run." Which got me listening to a lot of Bruce's albums again. And I thought "Visitation Street" read like an early Springsteen album. It's got that gritty, east coast working class vibe.
Though, of course, you cannot dance to it. :-)
May 16, 2023
Ivy Pachoda has written a book with a marvelous sense of place. The section of Red Hook, Brooklyn, becomes alive and organic before our eyes and we feel the streets, the neighborhood and its people in our bones. We understand the projects and its separation from the houses. The neighborhood is in transition with regentrification taking place. Soon, even cruise ships will be landing there. The story is captivating and keeps the pages turning.
Fifteen year olds Val and June, on a summer's evening, want an adventure, a dream experience that will take them, at least for a moment, out of Red Hook. They take a pink raft and drop it in the mucky waters and plan to sail out to somewhere different, perhaps Manhattan. Watching them is Cree, an 18 year-old boy who they flirt with. Cree himself would like this adventure and wishes he could go with them. He watches the raft from all angles on the land and then decides to swim out after them. He tries to reach them but the current is too strong and he is not able to get to the raft. He swims back to shore. Next morning, Val is found unconscious on land and there is no sign of June.
The book looks at this situation from the viewpoints of different people - Jonathon Sprouse, a music teacher and serious alcoholic; Cree, the 18 year-old who watched the raft and now is at risk of being arrested; Fadi, the bodega owner who tries to keep the community together by putting out a newsletter and giving out free food; Gloria, Cree's mother who sits on a bench outside the projects where her husband was shot and talks to his ghost; Ren, the mysterious young man who shadows Cree and befriends Fadi; Val, who misses June with a vengeance and starts to obsess on Jonathon who was the one who found her unconscious; and Monique, Cree's cousin who hears the voice of June in her head and can't escape her ghost.
Cree is being watched carefully by the police despite his innocence. He is black and has not been welcome at Val's house when he was friends with her older sister. Cree is desperate to get out of Red Hook but doesn't want to leave his mother. "Cree's tired of this place. It's not just the apartment that's bugging him; it's the entire neighborhood. It's the cops who've kept their eye on him ever since June Giatto went missing. It's the white girls who cross the street as if he might make them vanish too." He thinks about applying to community college which seems worlds away to him but he keeps putting off his application. He worries about this man Ren who is following him and appears at all his secret places and hiding spots. Who is he and what does he want from Cree?
Monique, who sings at the Tabernacle Church, can no longer perform. She hears June's voice all the time. The voices are "rough and eroded. They sound like the ach of the wind in a charred forest, the rattle of a can rolling down an empty street, the whisper of dust in a gutted building - hollow, noises unaccustomed to an audience. They suggest a loneliness worse than pain." Monique tries to run from the voices but how can she run from what is inside her?
Fadi, the bodega owner, is at a loss about how to bring the community together and how to build up his business. He thinks about how "folks insisted on dwelling on what they lacked, the adventures that were out of reach, the customers who didn't come, the people who went missing, the people who got dropped." Though he tries to build cohesion, he elicits dissension.
Val is lonely and despairing. Instead of her school friends showing compassion towards her because of the loss of her best friend, they gossip about her behind her back and make fun of her. She does not know what to do. She sees Jonathon Sprouse outside her house watching her window and is drawn to him despite the fact that he is a teacher in her school, St. Bernadette's.
Jonathon Sprouse had promise as a young man. He attended Juilliard but was kicked out and then attended a public school for the arts. He was a star in one Broadway play that flopped after a few days. Now he teaches music in a catholic school and he hates it. Most evenings he spends his nights in a local bar where he is called Maestro. There he drinks until he is too drunk to walk and he falls back to his apartment in a drunken haze. Luckily for him, his apartment is on top of the bar. He feels responsible for Val and so he watches her window at night to make sure she is safe. He is tormented by guilt about the death of his mother, a prominent singer at one time. He has a belief that he could have saved her from drowning.
The novel is compelling but the author answers too many questions and does not let the reader figure out enough for themselves. However, Ivy Pachoda is a very good writer and one I will follow in the future. I enjoyed this book immensely and will remember the characters and place for some time.
Fifteen year olds Val and June, on a summer's evening, want an adventure, a dream experience that will take them, at least for a moment, out of Red Hook. They take a pink raft and drop it in the mucky waters and plan to sail out to somewhere different, perhaps Manhattan. Watching them is Cree, an 18 year-old boy who they flirt with. Cree himself would like this adventure and wishes he could go with them. He watches the raft from all angles on the land and then decides to swim out after them. He tries to reach them but the current is too strong and he is not able to get to the raft. He swims back to shore. Next morning, Val is found unconscious on land and there is no sign of June.
The book looks at this situation from the viewpoints of different people - Jonathon Sprouse, a music teacher and serious alcoholic; Cree, the 18 year-old who watched the raft and now is at risk of being arrested; Fadi, the bodega owner who tries to keep the community together by putting out a newsletter and giving out free food; Gloria, Cree's mother who sits on a bench outside the projects where her husband was shot and talks to his ghost; Ren, the mysterious young man who shadows Cree and befriends Fadi; Val, who misses June with a vengeance and starts to obsess on Jonathon who was the one who found her unconscious; and Monique, Cree's cousin who hears the voice of June in her head and can't escape her ghost.
Cree is being watched carefully by the police despite his innocence. He is black and has not been welcome at Val's house when he was friends with her older sister. Cree is desperate to get out of Red Hook but doesn't want to leave his mother. "Cree's tired of this place. It's not just the apartment that's bugging him; it's the entire neighborhood. It's the cops who've kept their eye on him ever since June Giatto went missing. It's the white girls who cross the street as if he might make them vanish too." He thinks about applying to community college which seems worlds away to him but he keeps putting off his application. He worries about this man Ren who is following him and appears at all his secret places and hiding spots. Who is he and what does he want from Cree?
Monique, who sings at the Tabernacle Church, can no longer perform. She hears June's voice all the time. The voices are "rough and eroded. They sound like the ach of the wind in a charred forest, the rattle of a can rolling down an empty street, the whisper of dust in a gutted building - hollow, noises unaccustomed to an audience. They suggest a loneliness worse than pain." Monique tries to run from the voices but how can she run from what is inside her?
Fadi, the bodega owner, is at a loss about how to bring the community together and how to build up his business. He thinks about how "folks insisted on dwelling on what they lacked, the adventures that were out of reach, the customers who didn't come, the people who went missing, the people who got dropped." Though he tries to build cohesion, he elicits dissension.
Val is lonely and despairing. Instead of her school friends showing compassion towards her because of the loss of her best friend, they gossip about her behind her back and make fun of her. She does not know what to do. She sees Jonathon Sprouse outside her house watching her window and is drawn to him despite the fact that he is a teacher in her school, St. Bernadette's.
Jonathon Sprouse had promise as a young man. He attended Juilliard but was kicked out and then attended a public school for the arts. He was a star in one Broadway play that flopped after a few days. Now he teaches music in a catholic school and he hates it. Most evenings he spends his nights in a local bar where he is called Maestro. There he drinks until he is too drunk to walk and he falls back to his apartment in a drunken haze. Luckily for him, his apartment is on top of the bar. He feels responsible for Val and so he watches her window at night to make sure she is safe. He is tormented by guilt about the death of his mother, a prominent singer at one time. He has a belief that he could have saved her from drowning.
The novel is compelling but the author answers too many questions and does not let the reader figure out enough for themselves. However, Ivy Pachoda is a very good writer and one I will follow in the future. I enjoyed this book immensely and will remember the characters and place for some time.
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