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Author: Ivy Pochoda
ISBN : B009NF6ZB6
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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.
Direct download links available for Epub Visitation Street
- File Size: 650 KB
- Print Length: 325 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0062249894
- Publisher: Dennis Lehane Books/Ecco (July 9, 2013)
- Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
- Language: English
- ASIN: B009NF6ZB6
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,183 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #65
in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Urban Life
- #65
in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Urban Life
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.