I could not get into this book, ultimately it was not form me and I could not finish it. It may be one for other readers

Having been a fan of Jennifer Egan for years, I was very much looking forward to reading this novel, but unfortunately, I was disappointed. I'm not sure why it didn't land with me, after all, it received numerous awards and nominations. I wish I could say that I loved it, but I cannot.

I've had this on my Kindle since it came out but have only just got to it. I felt like I didn't need to read another WW2 book, or another book about Irish Americans, or another on New York gangsters. I was wrong.

Manhattan Beach does follow a (surprisingly) conventional narrative path, but it's beautifully written. The characters are complex and I felt totally drawn into their world. An enjoyable and immersive read - it seems good writing trumps genre!
*
I received a copy of Manhattan Beach from the publisher via Netgalley.

I found this a difficult book to get into but it was worth persevering. After thinking I was not enjoying the book and almost giving up on it there was a sudden improvement and I was gripped. The story is told from the perspective of many different people, some more captivating than others but overall an interesting and enjoyable story.

Manhattan Beach is mash up of a novel and a collection of linked stories, it follows more than a dozen characters in interconnected episodes spanning nearly five decades. Each segment plunges the reader into the life of a different character, someone who has appeared already in an earlier episode, now seen more intimately.

The book opens as an11-year-old girl named Anna Kerrigan visits the Brooklyn shoreline on a winter day in the company of her father, Eddie, and an underworld figure named Dexter Styles. This brief encounter in 1934 sends the characters in different directions, but their fates are intertwined.

Egan's plotting can be on the nose at times, but the prose here is beautoful and the plot compulsive.

This is an epic historical tale, sweeping across multiple years, locations, and generations of the Kerrigan family. It paints a raw and honest account of how life would have been for many Americans at the time, providing an unflinching view of the hardships people faced.

The timeline does jump around a bit in order to incorporate all the events that are important to the plot, but this is largely done in a sensible way and luckily avoids confusion. That being said, there is a lot to keep track of and this is a fairly lengthy book so a certain degree of concentration will be required if you are not a fast reader!

It's clear that the author must have done a significant amount of research across a wide variety of topics in order to plan this book, and that research has definitely paid off in the final, published story.

Anna Kerrigan is the main character - a young girl who grows up throughout the course of the book. Starting out as a child who adores her father above all else, Anna progresses into her own person; a doting sister, a dedicated employee, an intelligent and sharp-minded individual, and an attractive young woman living in a man's world. As a reader, you share in Anna's hopes and dreams, her goals, ambitions, heartache, love and loss. As the innocent young girl is left behind, a special young woman emerges. Anna is truly a delight to read about.

Manhattan Beach is an excellent story and is definitely well worth a read!

Really enjoyable read. Good characters and a Good story. Well worth a read. Think others will enjoy.

This is the first book that I have read by Egan and I was really disappointed. I read rave reviews about A Visit from the Goon Squad and so for this to be a flop was a bit sad really... ! I couldn't get into the book for starters. There was nothing gripping or exciting about the introduction to the main characters and in fact the book sort of branched off after that and went in different directions - maybe more than one story in one? There was a lack of clarity and next to no emotional engagement. If you were to ask me what this novel is about... I couldn't pinpoint it to answer you correctly.

I received a copy from Netgalley.

This is one of those books that's out of my usual comfort reading zone but sounded really good so I thought I would give it a try. It's not that I hate it or anything, I did actually like most of what I read, the setting was interesting and so were the characters but it's been well over month since I last picked this book up and don't see myself doing so any time some. Something I may pick up again at a different time - I didn't dislike it or anything I just seem to have lost interest for the time being.

Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for approving my request to view the title.

Deception, devotion and diving suits

We first meet Anna at the age of 12 during the time of the Great Depression. She is accompanying her father, Ed Kerrigan, a union leader and part-time bagman (a courier of the proceeds of illegal enterprises) who is visiting Dexter Styles, a gangster boss with a young family, and it is after this meeting that Anna realises that deception can be advantageous. Anna has a severely disabled younger sister, Lydia, who has cerebral palsy and needs constant attention, and Anna and her mother care for her with unwavering love and devotion. Ed, meanwhile, cannot cope with Lydia’s illness and his financial problems, in spite of augmenting his union salary with the proceeds of his involvement in the crime. He disappears, vanishing out of their lives without a trace but leaving many unanswered questions – was he murdered or did he stage his disappearance in order to escape his responsibilities?

Anna and her mother finally accept the fact that Ed is not coming back, all the while continuing to care for Lydia. Time passes; World War II breaks out, and America joins in on the side of the Allies. Anna, now in her late teens, joins the war effort in the naval dockyard on the instrument inspection team. She meets up with Dexter Styles again, but he doesn’t recognise her and she doesn’t reveal who she really is as she has a gut feeling that he is somehow connected with her father’s disappearance.

While at the Dockyard she applies to join the Naval Diving Unit. Her strength of character and her determination to succeed against all odds – including, at first, the initial male chauvinism she experiences that borders on the insulting, plus having to wear a diving suit weighing 200lbs which is much more than she does, results in her becoming the first ever female diver and the best in her unit.

It took me a while to get into this book, but I’m very glad that I persevered. The author’s sharply observed characters and clever writing create a fascinating story with several different strands in its DNA – Anna, her father, Dexter Styles – all characters with flaws yet who all have redeeming characteristics. Well, perhaps not Dexter Styles! The fourth strand in the DNA spiral is the sea and its effect on them all. Manhattan Beach is a gripping and satisfying read and I give it four stars.

Bennie Bookworm

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

A good read about a period in time i knew very little about. The book has clearly been well researched and there is a lot of information in there. I
It starts of well and i was soon engrossed. However there was so many elements and storylines in this book taking you off on so many different threads it became a little confusing, and i started to lose the connection with the novel. I did finish it but no one i could give 5 stars.

My thanks to Little Brown Book Group UK for the ebook of this novel and apologies for the late feedback. This was due to vision issues that have recently been corrected by surgery.

I was surprised by ‘Manhattan Beach’ as it was quite different to her ‘A Visit From The Goon Squad’, though certainly it was well written and she did a brilliant job of evoking the period and especially the New York waterfront.

The novel opens during the Great Depression though most of the story is set in 1942/43. It follows the stories of Anna Kerrigan, whose father had disappeared some years previously; her father Eddie, who had been involved in some shady activities before his disappearance; and Dexter Styles, the gangster Eddie worked with and who Anna believes holds the key to her questions about her father. Along the way Anna trains as a civilian diver overcoming many obstacles in this male-dominated field.

From the text (and confirmed by the author’s notes) a great deal of research went into this novel about the waterfront, organised crime, deep sea diving and the merchant marine during WWII.

I felt very present in so many scenes such as the claustrophobia of diving in full gear. It also highlights how much has changed for women since the 1940s. It also demonstrates Egan’s skills as a storyteller in a traditional style.

Recommended.

I've seen a lot of people rave about this book since I finished it, but again, I opened this knowing absolutely zilch about it. I believe I was sent it via Netgalley, so I didn't even remember reading the blurb.

I honestly find the plotline a little hard to get to grips with so excuse me if my synopsis seems complicated. The book opens in the Depression era, with 11-year-old Anna Kerrigan accompanying her father, Eddie, to a meeting at the lavish home of Dexter Styles, a nightclub owner with mob connections. Eddie is looking for work in order to care for his disabled daughter Lydia, but is he in over his head with Dexter?

Years pass and Eddie has disappeared from Anna's life. She supports her mother and Lydia by working in the Brooklyn Naval Yard during the war. Her precociousness shows as she becomes the first female scuba diver in the yard, helping to repair ships. One night, she has a chance encounter with Dexter Styles - and their complicated relationship leads her to question Eddie's disappearance. Where did he go, and why?

I feel so conflicted about this book. There are three main themes in it: Anna's work in a male-dominated industry, Eddie's past and his ties to the criminal underworld, and Dexter's influence on them both. There are lots of time-jumps and perspective shifts, and although I enjoyed parts of it very much, overall the book felt very disjointed and confusing.

Anna's storyline was my favourite part, but there were pages and pages of superfluous detail about her learning to dive. The entire inclusion of her sister, Lydia, didn't seem to come to any real conclusion or have any real influence. I was a bit disappointed by the way the stories were tied together; Dexter was an important part of both their lives but there was never the climax in either story that I was really hoping for. It was as if the novel was actually formed of short stories about the same group of characters.

Despite this, the prose is beautifully written, with a vivid eye for detail. I was definitely drawn in by the writing, but the overall story was clunky.

An interesting mystery with a strong female character - defining the standards set by the males to outshine them all! It also ends well so that's always great :)

I enjoyed Manhattan Beach - a good read. Set in the early 1930's and 1940's America it is a detailed, complex story about a young woman still mourning the disappearance of her father whilst working at a naval shipyard and training to be a diver in the aftermath of Pearl Harbour. Beautifully researched the reader is immediately transported to the period. I almost loved this novel.

I genuinely hate doing this but sadly I didn't finish this book. I had high hopes going into this book and from the blurb it sounded right up my street. Unfortunately DNF :-(

The plot surrounds the Kerrigan family in the 1930s and 40s as they negotiate the troubles of the aftermath of the Depression, gangster life and the Second World War. It is also very personal as the family struggle with secrets and the uncomfortable reality of caring for a child with disabilities 80 years ago.
I found myself completely captivated by this book. I loved Anna’s triumph in the dockyard as she beat gender stereotypes in order to dive. The relationship between Anna and Dexter was so complicated and passionate that I wanted them to be together whilst knowing the relationship was doomed. The narrative strand off Eddie’s experience in the navy was both vivid and terrible.
I felt that the ending was slightly rushed and wasn’t the conclusion that the book deserved. I wanted to know more of the reconciliation and the life that Anna and Eddie had created for themselves.
Overall this book was very enjoyable and well researched with plenty of rich historical detail mingled with the human narratives that made me care for the characters.
4 out of 5!

DNF at 45%. I really wanted to enjoy this but I just can’t get into it. There’s a couple of different storylines going on and I’m finding it very hard to be interested in any of them. Perhaps another time.

This was a disappointing story which I had looked forward to reading. It was very slow moving and seemed to be made of lots of different parts, some of which were very good, but didn't seem to join together. The background to the story was good but the concept a bit far fetched. I hadn't read any of Jennifer Eagans' books before, so had no preconceived ideas and was left unfulfilled.

I mostly enjoyed this book. There was an awful lot to like about the characters and writing, and some parts really engaged me. The denouement felt a little disappointing, maybe too much like perhaps it was shoehorning the story into a twist type thriller structure.