Flatbush Odyssey: A Journey Through the Heart of Brooklyn

Sarah Robertson is an associate editor of the Canadian Book Review
Annual.

In the spring of 1993, Allen Abel, a CBC producer-journalist and The
Globe and Mail’s former Asia bureau chief, returned to his native
Brooklyn. The apartment in which Abel grew up served as home base as he
explored and researched the history of Brooklyn’s main artery,
Flatbush Avenue, sometimes accompanied by his sister (“Little
Debbie”) and by his mother, the irrepressible Hennie Lucci. This
exhaustive and meticulously researched book details the radical changes
that Brooklyn has undergone since Abel’s childhood. In the intervening
years, it has evolved from a middle-class Jewish and Irish enclave to a
predominantly Caribbean community. While Abel refuses to gloss over the
city’s status as urban nightmare, his book is more a Whitmanesque
celebration of inclusiveness than it is a lament for things past.
Readers who expect a personal memoir will be disappointed by the rare
and less-than-revealing glimpses into the author’s family history. It
is only when Abel’s focus is trained on the people and landmarks of
his birthplace that his considerable gift for storytelling truly takes
flight.