Oh my goodness but this book. Which, is that how I start a lot of blog posts lately? I feel like it is. I make no apology; I’m reading some good stuff. This book is Some Good Stuff.

I read Jennifer Egan’s A Letter from the Goon Squad a few years ago (way back in 2011 thanks Goodreads) and I loved it, which, so did lots of other people because Pulitzer. I have her other work on my shelf but somehow I’ve never gotten around to reading it so when this copy of her new novel Manhattan Beach crossed my path I kind of jumped on it. All the grabby hands all the time though.
I’m so glad I did. It ticked a lot of boxes for me, this sweeping epic novel and I loved it. I mean, I’m always all about the historical fiction; if there’s a book set either in Tudor times or somewhere around WWII then there’s a fairly good chance I’m going to want to read it because I LOVE THAT STUFF but Manhattan Beach is so much more than a war story. It’s not even a war story, really which kind of makes my point redundant except not really, just hang on in there because I’ll talk sense eventually. It’s not a war story; it’s a story set partly during the Second World War and more than anything it illustrates that even when the world is gripped by war, life goes on – we all still have our own battles to fight.

Also: New York. No other city ever made me glad.

BUT WHAT IS IT ABOUT. Well. It follows the life of Anna, starting when she’s 11 as she accompanies her Dad to a visit to a New York mobster, which as openings to a book go might be one of the strongest ever and so so effective, and flashing forward from there to the mid-40’s when the world is at war, and Anna is 19. She works at the Navy Yard but she has dreams of being a diver which is ludicrous, obvs, because diving isn’t women’s work, so there’s that story, of this tenacious young woman who is determined not to be held back. Then, there’s the whole story of her Dad and how he came to have that meeting with that mobster and what happened after, and there’s the story of the mobster himself and God but I love me a sympathetic villain, and then the story of Anna and her mum (who used to be a Ziegfeld Folly, be still my Funny Girl loving heart) and her disabled sister Lydia, and it’s all so complex and clever and interesting and all the threads of these stories are all intricately woven together and this book is a feast let me tell you.

We’ve a split narrative going on too which is most excellent– the story shifts from Anna to her dad to the mobster, Dexter Styles (I think Anna and Dexter’s stories were my faves) but all three voices are so clear and so individual that the story never loses pace and the whole thing just fascinated me from start to finish.

It’s a story with SO MUCH HEART also. You find yourself caring about every single character in this book, even the ones you feel like maybe you shouldn’t, even the ones that are secondary to the story. It’s part war story, part crime novel, part sweeping family saga and it’s excellent. It explores fractured family bonds, love and lies and betrayal and discovery and it does it all in a way that feels familiar at the same time as feeling entirely brand new and IT IS SO BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN and so detailed, so very detailed, detailed to the point that you feel it; this is not a book that you read, it’s one that you live. Egan spent a long long time researching and writing this book and it shows. This book is…I think it might turn out to be one of the greats. I loved it that much.


Manhattan Beach was published in October so you can get yourself a copy just in time for Christmas. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR.

The Sopranos meet On The Waterfront, I enjoyed this very much. Characters well drawn and the setting well observed. A good read.

I have to admit to not having read any of Jennifer Egan's work previously, but rest assured with this book I know it will be the first of many. She writes with the authority of a well researched background and her use of beautiful English prose is very much in the Michener idiom.

The story manages to intertwine the progress of a young girl Anna - whose father had abandoned his family who wishes to do "her bit" for the American war effort in the early 1940s with the upward progress of a gangster / nightclub owner. Add into this mix, the background story of the trials and tribulations of her father as he makes his way through life from low level criminal to a wartime merchant seaman then you get a superb story woven by Egan into an unforgettable novel.

Egan's use of English can be highlighted by the following snippet spoken by an unusual but erudite Nigerian bosun who found himself subservient to the rising fortunes of Anna's wayward father. "....if you will permit me ...(a) bracingly candid response....Men so far outside my intellectual scope do not normally crave extensive and repeated interactions.....it would imply that our inner lives had the slightest modicum of solidarity.."

Just read this book, trust me you will thank me later.

An island of brilliance in a sea of dross

It’s been some time since I read something quite as good as this: basically, the story of a girl, her father and the vicissitudes of life – but, also, of so much more. I was tempted to say that it’s a story of the sea but that might be a bit of a stretch!

Nevertheless, though that might seem somewhat odd in novel that begins in 1920s New York, the sea is ever present and its narrative influence on the main characters, whether driven or drifting, permeates the story throughout.

The prose is often luminous, the characterization rich, the story rich and compelling. If you pick up this book and begin reading you will be doing yourself a great favour!

Thank you to NetGalley and Corsair for allowing me to review this book.
Set in New York, the book follows the life of a girl growing up through WWII. It has love, betrayal, intrigue and hope as it’s key themes.
I enjoyed the book, it’s well written and I liked the various twists though storyline. I didn’t find it a ‘couldn’t put it down’ book though and therefore it took me longer than expected to read.

Manhattan Beach is an intriguing story set in New York just before and during World war 2. It follows a family whose lives we see unfolding as world problems escalate. The mob culture and the way society is divided by race, class and gender are all covered in this book following Anna as she grows up and her father disappears mysteriously. When her life become entwined with the person who knows what happened the story gets even darker. Jennifer Egan has written a real page turner with an unusual setting in the Naval Yards of New York

This is the first book from Jennifer Egan that I have read and I loved the historical context and the "fact" that some ladies do still manage to make their (positive) mark in a male dominated society. The overall level of detail kept me reading to the end - but - have to say that I found the parts of the story really didn't join up very well and I am sad about that.

I'm afraid I couldn't get on with Manhattan Beach. It's decently written and Jennifer Egan has plainly researched the period meticulously, but I found it rather turgid, with unconvincing characters and, frankly, dull.

I wholeheartedly approve of one of the central themes of this novel, in which Anna grows up in the middle years of the 20th Century and wants to become a naval diver, battling the attitudes of the time toward women. The trouble is that Egan never managed to bring either Anna or the story truly alive for me. I found her style rather plodding and off-putting, with the occasional sentence like "Beyond the windows of an adjacent front room, the sea tingled under a thin winter sun," which just felt mannered to me. I also think that Egan is rather too keen on showing us exactly how much detailed research she has done, rather than simply using it unobtrusively to paint a convincing background, so wading through it all became a bit of a chore after a while.

As a result of all this, I found Manhattan Beach a real struggle. I had expected to like it very much, but ended up skimming some parts and feeling rather relieved to have finished it. Others have found it very good, but personally I can't recommend it.

I'm afraid that the start was terribly slow, it started to pick up a bit from about a quarter of the way in, and then lost me again at the half way point. The novel wears its research quite heavily and each time the perspective shifts it feels like you have to try to re-establish your relationship with the book. For a novel that was so heavily hyped, it was a bit lacklustre. Sorry :(

Anna grows up in the Depression when her father is in desperate need to provide for his wife an ex- Zefield dancer, Anna and her beautiful disabled sister. Eddie becomes involved with Dexter Styles who is married to a socialite but who rules the underworld for his patron Q. Life seems to be perfect until Eddie disappears and his daughter applies to work at the Naval Yard where she fights discrimation to become a naval diver. The prose evokes the the experiences of diving and the whole novel describes vividly the wartime lives of those involved in the convoys undertaken by the merchant navy. How Anna and Eddie survive what life throws at them makes for a page turning novel.

Having read the blurb about the most anticipated book of 2017 I approached this keenly. While I enjoyed it, the book didn't live up to the hype. A bit slow in places for me, although I could see the social subtleties behind the prose. How the family and the wider community dealt with Anna's disabled sister. Anna becoming accepted as a diver. And the story behind it was a bit of an easy coincidence of meeting and having a relationship. Having very recently visited New York for the first time, the piers etc were of great interest as I could imagine the areas. A struggle to keep going sometimes and not one I'd recommend.

This review for Manhattan Beach is one of the hardest I have had to write. I have started to write it several times but each time I came near my kindle to get a few quotes to put in my review I found myself finding some other task to occupy myself with instead. The idea of having to read any more of the book just put me off completely.
Many times, whilst reviewing books I have decided not to finish them knowing they weren’t for me, but Manhattan Beach was different because there was the occasional glimmer to interest me and entice me back. The result of this was that around 58% of the way through I decided to give up on the book and to avoid picking up my kindle for a few days, so I wouldn’t be tempted and disappointed again. The few days ended up spiralling into an almost month-long reading slump.
Today I decided that enough was enough and It was finally time to start writing the review but without any quotes from the book.
It is hard to explain what this book was about it because that is one of the main things I struggled to determine whilst reading it as it chops and changes and goes off on some very dull tangents. It begins with a 12-year-old girl named Anna accompanying her father on a business trip to see a man named Mr Styles.
I found this first part of the book interesting and enjoyed the way the author described Anna’s experiences in a house so vastly different from her own. I also enjoyed reading about her father’s desire to be a good father and husband despite his inability to love his disabled daughter in the same way his wife and Anna were able to.
After this portion of the book there were vast portions where I felt like I really wanted to give up. I was interested in Anna’s experiences of trying to establish herself in a job which before the war had been male dominated. I also liked reading about how her experience of the job differed from the experience of her married colleague.
The point where it lost me again was when the book went off on a tangent about diving and Anna’s ambition to be the first female diver. If I hadn’t have had thirty minutes of my lunch break left with nothing to do, then I would have given up on the book at this point.
If the book had just been about Anna and her mother’s struggles to look after her sister Lydia, or solely about Anna’s working life then maybe I would have stuck it out. Likewise, if it had simply been a description of life as part of the mob then I would have enjoyed it more. My problem with Manhattan Beach is that I can’t really say it was about anything and each part didn’t fit smoothly with any other part. I was left wondering what the point was and why I had wasted so much time on this book.
I am sure there are reasons why some people found this book wonderful and there are so many good reviews of it but personally I cannot think of any.

In Manhattan Beach, Egan turns her hand to historical fiction for this drama set in New York in the 1930s and 40s.
I did not get on with the previous book I was reading, so starting to read this was like sinking into a warm bath. The writing is beautiful and flows easily. It shows that Eggan has done her research – there is plenty of period detail to keep most history geeks happy, and the writing evokes era very clearly.
The book is rather a mash-up of genres, and I wasn’t always sure what it wanted to be. Noire thriller? feminist meditation? historical pot-boiler? It certainly contained elements of all of these given. Main characters included gangsters, and female engineer-divers. Plot lines included disappearances, mob shootings, father-daughter relationships, unwanted pregnancies, and more.
For me, I didn’t find that the voices of the male characters were always convincing. Gangster Dexter Styles didn’t carry the weight or level of threat of a convincing gangster.
There is a lot going on in the book, and much to enjoy. To me, the pace seems to drop a little in the middle and it was hard to keep all the plotline plates spinning with equal momentum.
However, overall, this is a well written, involving book with something for many tastes.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to finish this book, it held no interest for me.

I almost enjoyed this book. I was really interested in Anna’s story and the mystery that is set up in the early chapters. Sadly nothing was explored in any detail and the swapping between timelines and points of view frustrated me. I was also ultimately disappointed in the ending which just seemed so hum drum. It had a lot of potential but just wasn’t what I was anticipating from the early chapters. You’d be better off re-reading the great gatsby.

I just couldn't get on with the book and gave up. It just wasnt for me.

The blurb for this book doesn't really reveal much about the plot, and I spent a lot of time trying to work out what it was: a family saga? a war novel? a love story? a gangster thriller? an ode to diving? a thirties NYC drama?
The answer is all of the above, and a lot more. It's a meandering novel set over several years, with a cast of POV characters all leading back to a girl called Anna. I love Anna a lot: she's powerful, in a very physical, determined way. She becomes a diver building war ships in WWII, in a time when diving meant carrying around a lead weighted suit as heavy as a man, and breathing through a tube stretching up to the surface. Nobody wants to let a woman do it, but she's passionate and good at the job, and she gets there. That's my favourite storyline, but there are many many more in this book - her father's middle aged crisis/shipwreck/run from the law, her lover's determination to turn good and end his gangster hustling, her disabled sister's desperation for mental stimulation, her mother's late-life freedom.
I'm not sure I'd have picked up this book if I wasn't already a fan of Egan - there really isn't a high concept hook to it. But I'm really glad I did, because it's a very solid, well researched dive into a very specific transitional time in history, when male and female roles in society - and the grey area between legal and illegal activities - became blurred.

I might have been a bit unjust in the two star rating but this book just did not appeal to me. I managed to read a quarter but could not see where it was leading so e fed up giving up on it

I didn't fall in love with this book immediately, and after the first read wondered if it had what I wanted of a lengthy novel. I am so pleased I persevered as the characters developed slowly but surely until I felt I had a connection with Anna, the main character. With an ex-naval husband, I really enjoyed the nautical part to the book, and I could smell the story, from the oils , the ship, the sea and even of the sailors.
I did become confused in parts, mainly around the shady side if what was going on, this wasn't always clear but didn't detract from the story. I also got confused over the Surname of Eddie and the ships captain, but that's just me .
I enjoyed having the word checker on my kindle, as there were words I was unfamiliar with, I really enjoy this as love to expand on my personal language.

I found the book very slow and had to struggle to keep going. The story picked up but at places did lose its spark. Im glad I did finish it though but it did take me a long time to finish it.