Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block

I received this book as an early review copy and in the process of my own move, lost it. I could have faked a review and been done with it, and then continued to have access to the early review copies, but that is not how I work. I needed to read the book to write the review. Finally, the other day while cleaning out some stored boxes, I found it. Finally. Yay! I've been looking for it for years now.

Home Girl was mostly an enjoyable read. Matloff's writing has a decent flow and her prose is down to earth but the story itself has an odd unbalanced feel to it.

I've not traveled the world like she has, but I've been to Rio and Sao Paulo. I've lived in neighborhoods much like she wrote about in Home Girl with the local drug dealers working the corner across the street and colorful characters next door or down the block. I even had a character living next door that was much like the Salami in her book.

From both a sociology standpoint, and a nostalgic one, I loved her descriptions of the neighbors, the neighborhood and it's colorful denizens. But aspects of her story bother me. I felt that sometimes she wrote dispassionately and lacked any emotional connection, then further on would attempt to remedy it. That sort of shift felt very disjointed as if she added parts later to present herself as more compassionate. Unfortunately, I wasn't convinced. Those parts of the story felt very disingenuous to me. I begin to feel that she was obsessed with the house and didn't care much about anything else, and by the end, I didn't really like the author as much as I would have liked.

We don't always have to like the protagonist, but in a memoir, it helps if we're emotionally invested somehow. Matloff's journalism background served her well in writing a book that detailed the social shift in the culture of drugs and community gentrification and it's very possible that her journalistic objectivity was what kept her from being able to write in a way that fully engaged the reader. But ultimately, the book was very readable and did have great moments.

(I would like to add that this in no way means I think the author is unlikeable in any way. It just means that, by the end of the book, the sense of self Matloff conveyed was distant and I didn't feel any emotional connection to her at all.)

If you do read the book though here is Matloff's site with a video of her home and some of the faces from her book. http://www.judithmatloff.com/video.html

I think photos added would have helped ground the story. There might be photos in the later editions, I don't know. I have only the review copy. ( )

A poignant, honest portrayal of a woman searching for home, Home Girl is an intriguing if sometimes wandering, snapshot of a ex-pat putting down roots. She doesn't candy-coat, and I think that is what keeps the majority of the memoir from becoming trite. A good read. ( )

Home Girl is written in an easy, breezy and totally relatable style. Matloff is surprisingly honest about the flaws that got her into the situations that she encountered in the 2-3 years that she spent buying and renovating her brownstone; namely blindness and desperation in finding the place, lack of due diligence about her new neighborhood (and with her background as a reporter!) and then optimism and goodwill when dealing with shady contractors (money concerns limited her options). As someone who has searched for an apartment in New York City, I can tell you that a lack of resources and the drive to find the right living space can you make all of those things and much, much more. I am never crazier than when I am trying to find a place.Home Girl had a colorful cast cast of characters. There was the squatter/next door neighbor Salami, who gently terrorized Matloff through the renovation of her apartment; Miguel, the drug dealer/supervisor of the "muchachos" who plied their trade on her door step, all while piling it high with the refuse from their leftover lunches and taking bathroom breaks on her stairs. Matloff formed a tentative bond with all of them even as she attended community meetings with the police and her long suffering neighbors, including one man who planted plastic plants in his garden so that the real ones wouldn't be ruined by the abuse of the guys on the street. It was interesting to see all of them come together as the neighbor hood improved.I was pleasantly surprised by the sociological aspect of this book. One of the things that Matloff goes into is the reason why there are so many beeper/ cellular stores, nail salons, check cashing places, and high end sneaker shops in a poor neighborhood (they are drug laundering fronts); something I have seen and wondered vaguely about, but never really knew the answer. She also talks about the protections that the drug dealers brought to the tenants and forming a tentative relationship with Miguel. Petty crime and robbery can be low in drug dealing hot spots because dealers keep crime low to avoid drawing the attention of the police. When Matloff has a run-in with a crazy woman on the streets and talks to the police, Miguel chastises her for not coming to him first. He later takes care of the situation for her.Ostensibly this book is about how Matloff was able to turn a desolate and abandoned building into a home, and make friends in a neighborhood where she as a white woman is in the minority, and it did that in addition to it's other offerings. I did grow a little weary of her naivete, background as a reporter notwithstanding, she left herself wide open on a lot of things; take for example when she publishes an expose on the drug dealing in the neighborhood and doesn't expect there to be any repercussions or backlash. I doubt if I would be so brave as to publish an unflattering article about where I lived without at least thinking about how I would deal with people not liking what I wrote. Her lack of understanding that her expose article could be an issue also made me think about the audience for this book, which was tricky for me. On one hand it can be read as an inside look at what happens when a neighborhood gentrifies, something that can be of interest to anyone for myriad reasons, but it is also one woman's experience and told from her perspective so some of the language can seem distancing as she shares assumptions and biases that not everyone will share with her. I don't know that there is any way around that, but it was interesting angle to consider as I read this. I enjoyed reading this book. It's an interesting mix in that it is a study of a neighborhood in transition, and a heartwarming story of a woman putting down roots and trying to embrace her new home and the culture of where she lives. A fun read, and thought provoking at the same time. ( )

The one thing that bothered me the most about this book was that I really had no sense of her husband. She worried about his reaction to the house, but it was glossed over. Almost anything having to do with her husband was glossed over. It was interesting to read her take on the neighborhood activities and the inevitable gentrification. ( )

I had a difficult time staying engaged with this story because it tended to wander a bit and get bogged down in tedium. However, I did enjoy reading about the history of the area and Matloff's journey to home ownership. ( )