Manhattan Beach: Jennifer Egan

More formally constructed than the highly unconventional, multi-narrative "Goon Squad", this historical novel still addresses the issues of time, identity and suffocating social mores through the stories of several interconnected characters, led by the young woman who wants to become a diver working on war ships in the New York docks during World War 2. Written with real style, this is a most enjoyable read: precise description brings this world to life and there is plenty of tension in each character's story, with occasional near-fantasy development.

I enjoyed the story very much

it was a good read and a very detailed evocation of an era and its ethnic mix , However i found it quite repetitive and the descriptions ponderous at times, heavy with research which slowed the flow.

I'm not sure if this book is really well written but it's an absolutely lovely and riveting read. It was a little slow to get going - but when it moves to the present day it's great. The main characters were interesting and rounded, the story gripping and the historical detail immersive. It paints a good depiction of wartime New York and the gangsters that made America.

Egan brings alive the atmosphere of both 1930s and wartime Manhattan with extensive colour and detail. The moral dilemmas of a man who becomes a bag carrier for the Mob in order to support his family are sensitively drawn, and the main character Anna is a sympathetically assertive woman who is determined to become the first female diver. There are some bravura passages of writing, such as the story of a boat load of shipwrecked sailors making their way from mid-Atlantic to the African coast. Epic in scope, it could perhaps have done with a tighter narrative structure.

Perfect condition

Well written, absorbing story. I would have given it five stars but Jennifer Egan spent too much time researching diving and it shows. I could have written the manual after reading this. Less is more. But setting aside this, the book captures the time and the political atmosphere. It held me throughout except I got a bit eye glazed on the fitting of diving helmets.

Enough drama to keep your heart in your mouth at several points, characters written in sufficient depth to make them realenough to care about and detailed descriptions that brought the places and scenarios to life. This was a surprisingly enjoyable book that I did not want to end.

Based around the story of a family starting around the end of the depression and running into the end of WW2 the story runs through the life of one main character. It’s a well crafted story with some interesting twists and turns and at times different sub plots. The writing style is engaging and the author has a great descriptive skill. A worthy read.

A BEAUTIFUL BOOK, FULL OF SURPRISES, DIFFICULT TIMES AND LOVE. GIRL POWER AS OUR PROTAGANIST GOES AGAINST ALL ODDS TO FULFIL HER IDEALS AND GET TO THE BOTTOM OF A QUESTION SHE ASKS HERSELF CONTINUOUSLY.

Se plonger dans le monde nouveau à une période trouble de son histoire, une description d'un milieu mafieux dans les années de la prohibition, à travers les yeux d'une enfant!

This a damn fine book. The protagonist couldn’t have been better chosen: a working-class girl, freakishly unlucky but stalwart, living in Depression-era New York City. The names of the neighborhoods appear on signs with the flickering, colored lights of gangsterism and industrialism that illuminated Gotham during the Roosevelt years. Anyone who is decently read has heard those names and will recognize the connotations. Most of us with an interest in history will know something about that setting, about that time. The close-together mentions of Oriental Boulevard and the Brighton Beach trolley has us imagining the group pictures of our Great Uncle Sal and his sailor buddies, the ones lost at sea in a diesel submarine, that used to hang on the wall at Grandma’s house. As a source of entertainment, ‘Manhattan Beach’ resembles production of a family dinner in the days when dinner spent an hour in the oven before the preparation appeared to commence. The first 100 pages are all about character, setting and backstory. Only when that is done do the items that make up the narrative arc get pulled out of the icebox, two or three at a time. That’s when our protagonist, Anna, is grown and she engages powerfully, far more than was typical for women of the era, with two of the scariest parts of New York’s underbelly, never seeming to lose her self-control or her plan. Her relationships with all of the men around her are, initially, defined by the rules of the era. Women were dependent beings. They were daughters, sisters, wives and, sometimes, worker bees, but almost never anything more. Anna was the one who refused to be held back any more than necessary. She was Lois Lane in a deep-sea diving suit. Some people admired her, but just as many were thinking that any woman who worked a job that didn’t involve teaching children or sewing was stealing paychecks from a man. Ms. Egan’s earlier works are truly superb. And this book is excellent. It was dutifully researched and detailed. It was written in a compelling prose, parts of which could have come from a cookbook that included a recipe for Baked Alaska. However, it is missing an ingredient present in her earlier work: a soul. This book lacks meaning any deeper than the pancake makeup worn by the performers playing the seaside gin mills. It is a great story masterfully researched and told. It is superb historical fiction. But it is not the literary fiction Ms. Egan has led us to expect and it travels across ground that perhaps too many writers have already traveled.

Was reluctant to buy this book at first (read "Look at me" from the same author and wasn't that enthusiastic about it). But curiosity killed the cat and in this case it was a very happy ending because the book turned out to be absolutely fantastic. The story is thrilling in more than one aspect and the protagonists are very real. Plus it's written well. Actually I rationed my reading because I didn't want to end the book too soon.