Holy crap....The Street by Ann Petry

Y'all I just finished this book in a feverish sprint and I neeeeeed to talk about it. Might be the best book I've read in the last 12 months and it absolutely destroyed me.

The synopsis: ""The Street" tells the poignant, often heartbreaking story of Lutie Johnson, a young black woman, and her spirited struggle to raise her son amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s. Originally published in 1946 and hailed by critics as a masterwork, The Street was Ann Petry's first novel, a beloved bestseller with more than a million copies in print. Its haunting tale still resonates today."

The use of space is GENIUS in this novel. Spaces become characters in their own right: a street, an apartment, a window on the second story from which a woman hangs out. Everything takes on bigger proportions, making the actions of the characters, the life trajectory of every person, seem inevitable.

This book is a sucker punch. I'm gutted. It covers a lot but it does it well. I finished the book, set it down, then stared at the wall with a void in my chest. I cannot recommend it highly enough.