Rating:
(179 reviews)
Author: Visit Amazon's Ivy Pochoda Page
ISBN : 0062249894
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Format: PDF, EPUB
Download for free books Epub Visitation Street (Dennis Lehane) Hardcover from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, July 2013: A crowd gathers on the corner of Visitation Street after the disappearance of two local girls--one of whom has washed up on shore, barely alive--and our narrator teases: “The story develops slowly.” The same can be said of Ivy Pochoda’s atmospheric debut, which is as much an ode to the ragged neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn as it is a slow-burning mystery. At times I felt I was reading of some foreign or forgotten city, a moody and crumbling place in the shadow of Manhattan. While the damaged-goods characters are quite memorable--a woman spends her days “speaking” to her dead husband; a music teacher drinks to oblivion, haunted by his dead mother; an immigrant shop owner dreams of a better Red Hook--the star here is “the Hook.” One character describes it as “a neighborhood of ghosts,” where trash rolls like tumbleweed--hazy, smelly, noisy, blue collar, crime-ridden, yet full of heart and hope. Says one character, who wants to flee Red Hook in the boat his murdered father left him: “It’s not such a bad place … if you look under the surface.” The same can be said of Visitation Street, a deceptively literary tale that brings to mind its benefactor, Denis Lehane, who published the book under his new imprint. --Neal Thompson
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Blue-collar Red Hook, a section of Brooklyn’s waterfront in rough transition, becomes one big outdoor theater as temperatures rise in Pochoda’s (The Art of Disappearing, 2009) beyond-category urban drama. African American kids from the projects, including pretty Monique, a singer of soaring power, hang out in cliques and gangs, while Monique’s smart, ambitious cousin, Cree, keeps to himself in various hideouts, including his late father’s grounded fishing boat. An exceptionally talented young street artist lives in a makeshift shelter in a weedy area known as Bones Manor. Smart and observant Fadi strives to upgrade his bodega to attract the neighborhood’s new hipsters, among them lost-soul musician and music teacher Jonathan. On one particularly stifling night, Val and June, “hot and stir-crazy” white teenage girls, dare to take a pink rubber raft out onto the treacherous Hudson River. Val is found unconscious beneath the pier; June is missing. During the ensuing investigation, even the dead have their say. The mysteries of sexuality, guilt, race and class conflicts, artistic pursuits, and psychic abilities are all in play as Pochoda transforms Red Hook into a microcosm of human longing. With prose as cleansing and propelling as a sea breeze and characters running like strong currents, Pochoda pulls us deeply into this transfixing tale of visitations both alarming and liberating. --Donna Seaman
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Direct download links available for Epub Visitation Street
- Series: Dennis Lehane
- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Dennis Lehane Books/Ecco (July 9, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0062249894
- ISBN-13: 978-0062249890
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Epub Visitation Street
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. As was Lehane in MYSTIC RIVER and GONE BABY GONE. Like VISITATION STREET, urban opera often starts with a crime/police procedural as a trigger. Then, the narrative at hand observes the effect of the crime on a town, and its people. Often, the police procedural 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 and ethnic 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 stay 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.
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.