Manhattan Beach

by Jennifer Egan

'This is a novel that will pull you in and under and carry you away on its rip tides . . . Its resonances continue to wash over the reader long after the novel ends' the Guardian '2017's Most Anticipated Book . . . it will suck you into its orbit and remind you just why it is you love reading' Stylist magazine 'This is a novel that deserves to join the canon of New York stories' New York Times Book Review The long-awaited novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach opens in ... Read More

'This is a novel that will pull you in and under and carry you away on its rip tides . . . Its resonances continue to wash over the reader long after the novel ends' the Guardian '2017's Most Anticipated Book . . . it will suck you into its orbit and remind you just why it is you love reading' Stylist magazine 'This is a novel that deserves to join the canon of New York stories' New York Times Book Review The long-awaited novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. 'We're going to see the sea,' Anna whispered. 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, the reasons he might have been murdered. 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. Manhattan Beach is a magnificent novel by one of the greatest writers of our time. 'Beautifully rendered . . . genuinely affecting and handsomely constructed. It moves for all the right reasons' Independent 'A gripping, modern version of a 19th century novel . . . such an absorbing read' Evening Standard Read Less