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Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

Historical fiction

Manhattan Beach

by Jennifer Egan

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Quick take

A sweeping narrative, rich in historical detail, brimming with finely drawn characters.

Synopsis

Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.

Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father's life, the reasons he might have vanished.

With the atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan's first historical novel follows Anna and Styles into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men. Manhattan Beach is a deft, dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world. It is a magnificent novel by the author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, one of the great writers of our time.

Free sample

Manhattan Beach

They'd driven all the way to Mr. Style's house before Anna realized that her father was nervous. First the ride had distracted her, sailing along Ocean Parkway as if they were headed for Coney Island, although it was four days past Christmas and impossibly cold for the beach. Then the house itself: a palace of golden brick three stories high, windows all the way around, a rowdy flapping of green-and-yellow-striped awnings. It was the last house on the street, which dead-ended at the sea. Her father eased the Model J against the curb and turned off the motor. "Toots," he said. "Don't squint at Mr. Styles's house." "Of course I won't squint at his house.'" "You're doing it now." "No," she said. "I'm making my eyes narrow." "That's squinting," he said. "You've just defined it." "Not for me." He turned to her sharply. "Don't squint." That was when she knew. She heard him swallow dryly and felt a chirp of worry in her stomach. She was not used to seeing her father nervous. Distracted, yes. Preoccupied, certainly. "Why doesn't Mr. Styles like squinting?" she asked.

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Why I love it

As any fan of Jennifer Egan knows, the only thing to expect from her work is the unexpected. After all, Egan’s bestseller, A Visit from the Goon Squad, had an entire chapter written in PowerPoint. So perhaps the most surprising aspect of Egan’s latest is how resolutely classic a novel it is. Manhattan Beach fully embraces and delivers a sweeping narrative, rich in historical detail, and brimming with finely drawn characters, whose struggles feel as intimately a part of you as your own.

Prepare to plunge feet-first into 1930s Brooklyn, as you meet 11-year-old Anna Kerrigan, who accompanies her father, Eddie, on a clandestine trip to the Manhattan Beach home of Dexter Styles, a powerful man with underworld connections only partially obfuscated by the wealthy family into which he married. Each of these characters will face battles between their interior and exterior lives that threaten to submerge them for good.

For Eddie, the struggle revolves around his desire to provide for his family—besides Anna, he and his wife have another, severely disabled daughter—while also getting out from under the thumb of his employer, a corrupt Irish union boss, whose life Eddie once saved.

For Dexter, who navigates widely disparate spheres of influence with seeming ease, the troubles begin when he tries to more fully enter the legitimate business world; it’s only then he realizes how many people don’t want him to rise above his station.

For Anna, problems emerge after the sudden, unexplained disappearance of her father, continue as she embarks on a career as the rare female diver at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and only get more complicated as her path crosses once again with that of Dexter'”the one man who might know where her father went.

If the plot sounds as vast as the oceans themselves, well, it is. But Egan masterfully uses the unknowable nature of the watery depths to convey the way her characters navigate through and sometimes elude the forces of fate. Manhattan Beach is a charged reminder of the ways in which we’re all connected, all made up of the same watery essence. And just as surely as the current brings us back into the past, so too does it bear us to our future; it’s all one, continuous space, a place to live, to die, and to be reborn.

Member ratings (2,412)

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Historical fiction
View all
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
The Women
The Lion Women of Tehran
Husbands & Lovers
Shelterwood
A Thousand Times Before
All We Were Promised
Spitting Gold
The Seventh Veil of Salome
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
The Great Divide
The Storm We Made
The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard
Lessons in Chemistry
The Frozen River
What We Kept to Ourselves
Take My Hand
The Last Russian Doll
The First Ladies
The House Is On Fire
River Sing Me Home
The Attic Child
Malibu Rising
The Book of Longings
Hester
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
The Nightingale
Daisy Jones & The Six
The Lincoln Highway
The Secret Book of Flora Lea
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
The Circus Train
Peach Blossom Spring
Hang the Moon
Booth
The Good Left Undone
The Perishing
The Family
Things We Lost to the Water
The Spectacular
Still Life
Send for Me
The Magnolia Palace
The Bookbinder
China Room
This Tender Land
Atomic Love
All the Light We Cannot See
The Vanishing Half
Outlawed
The Four Winds
Independence
The Fountains of Silence
Libertie
Queen of Thieves
The Great Believers
The Clockmaker's Daughter
A Gentleman in Moscow
The Great Alone
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
Rules of Civility
Circling the Sun
The Moor's Account
Jacqueline in Paris
Don't Cry for Me
The Christie Affair
Bloomsbury Girls
The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle
Bronze Drum