Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“The old man leaned forward and took a long breath. “I see the rise of this country to a height no country has occupied, ever,” he said quietly. “Not the Romans. Not the Carolingians. Not Genghis Khan or the Tatars or Napoleon’s France. Hah! You’re all looking at me like I’ve one foot in the funny farm. How is that possible? you ask. Because our dominance won’t arise from subjugating peoples. We’ll emerge from this war victorious and unscathed, and become bankers to the world. We’ll export our dreams, our language, our culture, our way of life. And it will prove irresistible.”- Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan

Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Anna observes the uniformed servants, the lavishing of toys on the children, and some secret pact between her father and Dexter Styles.

Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. She is the sole provider for her mother, a farm girl who had a brief and glamorous career as a Ziegfield folly, and her lovely, severely disabled sister. At a night club, she chances to meet Styles, the man she visited with her father before he vanished, and she begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life.

Mesmerizing, hauntingly beautiful, with the pace and atmosphere of a noir thriller and a wealth of detail about organized crime, the merchant marine and the clash of classes in New York, Egan’s first historical novel is a masterpiece, a deft, startling, intimate exploration of a transformative moment in the lives of women and men, America, and the world.

I have been wanting to read a Jennifer Egan book for some time now- A Visit From the Goon Squad has been on my list since I read Please Kill Me, actually- but it was Manhattan Beach that finally lured me in, because, even though it was WWII historical fiction, I had faith that it would be one of the more original additions to that particular bloated subgenre. Also, I miss historical fiction- too bad it's been horribly uninspired lately (2018, on the other hand, has been really looking up- January's going to be a busy month for me!). However, I can see why Manhattan Beach has been getting such bad ratings.

This is without a doubt a 4.5 (two star) book for me. Not because I hated it- it wouldn't even make my least favorites of 2017 list- but because it just wasn't that good. Too much was going on, and I was often confused by what was happening. Characters were added with little warning or clarification as to who they were and I think Egan just wanted to do way too much with the book that she never took a step back and said, okay, this is what's important to the plot. Like, we have the gang thing, and then the diving, and then the war, and the thing with Lydia, and Anna's father's disappearance and we have Anna's individual drama and there's just way more going on then there has to be. If I were Egan, I would make it exclusively about the dock working and gang stuff during the Depression, because those were the best (if somewhat confusing) parts of the novel. They were by far the most original ones, by the way. Anna's story-line during WWII was pretty generic women's fiction (think Kristin Hannah) type stuff. Not my favorite, but then again I generally avoid women's fiction so of course I wouldn't like those elements. 

The Lydia parts felt completely superfluous and were pretty obviously added in for the sake of drama. I wished those parts had been cut out, though I admit they do serve one very specific purpose, and that is to give the father a reason to want to work for Styles.

I felt little towards any of the characters. Anna was pretty bland, your basic historical fiction heroine, her father was interesting but kind of lost in the mix, as was Dexter. I think the characters were the biggest causalities of the pinball points of view that Egan employed to tell the story- by the time I got comfortable and made sense of one point of view, the book would jump to another POV with a whole different story attached and I would have to repeat the process all over again. 

An interesting contrast to Manhattan Beach is the shining star that is The Tsar of Love and Techno. The latter may be a collection of short stories and not a novel, but it feels more like a novel because of how connected each story is, despite how different the plot lines are for each. Manhattan Beach, on the other hand, feels more like a collection of short stories jumbled together to create one large novel. The ending come together is unsatisfying, especially given how hard it was to follow the book.

This all being said, I have not been deterred from my wanting to read another Jennifer Egan novel, with A Visit From the Goon Squad still being the most tempting (and probably safe choice: aging punks in the Bay area? Sign me up!)- though frankly, all of her books are really tempting; they all sound like something I would at least like. Hopefully this was just a fluke thing, though maybe not- she seems to be a very divisive author given that half her Goodreads reviews are five stars and the other half are 1 or 2 stars. But you know, only one way to find out!

4.5 out of 10