An interesting look at a part of naval war history which often goes unremarked..We start when the main character is quite young and it's all about her relationship with her father,then he goes missing.A big gap then we pick up when she's working in the naval yard.and wants to be a diver. The story begins to reveal itself but it's a long time getting there.

This is a brilliant,well written and well researched book. It tells of organised crime and the emancipation of woman during the Second World War. Anna's life is really well described and her fight to become a diver and find out what had happened her father had me clued to this book. This book was an easy read which kept me reading right to the end in one sitting. Jennifer Egan is definitely a good historical writer. I hope she writes more historical novels.
I realised about 3 or 4 pages in that I had read this book before. I had posted a review of it on Netgalley in May. This is the review above.

This is really difficult but I promised an honest review. It's probably me, but I didn't like it at all. I really couldn't see the point of any of it. If it was to show that a woman can be as strong as a man, why did the main character long for her father's return.

Whilst I have read the entire book it has not been a story that has gripped me and made me want to complete it in one sitting.
I have picked it up for Tube journeys on my phone and read as much as the journey has permitted and then left it until the next journey.
And yet I did find parts of it very interesting. For instance, when Anna  learns to dive. Finding out about what diving suits were like during the 1940s and how they worked was fascinating in a technical way. And of course the misogyny of the ship yards came through very strongly.
But this section exemplified what for me was the major problem with the book. The writing style. It lacked humour and tended to be dry rather than fluid.
The book jumped back and forward in time with no introduction, and each time I was lost for a while trying to figure out the year, and what had happened. Especially the section about Merchant ships.
There were a confusing number of names and I lost track of who was who each time it jumped.
For me, this was a novel with a story that should have been, but just wasn't. Disappointing. Really a 2.5.

It's a work of historical fiction beginning around the Great Depression and continuing through the war years. The book tells three different stories: Anna's story (who becomes the first female diver working for the Brooklyn Naval Yard) Her father's story and his problems with the mob; (who disappears under mysterious circumstances), and Dexter Styles' story, a nightclub

For long periods of time nothing much happened, and even the places with activity, the activity just wasn’t all that gripping. I learned a great deal while reading Manhattan Beach but it left me wanting to know more about the lives of the characters. The book is clearly well researched and that a lot of effort was placed into the historical content, which is always a plus. I particularly liked When Anna was caring for her sister, who had disabilities and needed constant care and supervision.

I did finish Manhattan Beach as it is my commitment is to read and review all the books that I am given, although I must admit this was a struggle

I would Still recommend it. Because of Anna's story

Lastly many thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK, for providing me with a copy this book in return for a fair and honest review.

I received an ecopy of this book from Netgalley. I had no preconceived ideas about the book other than the fact that it is written by a Pulitzer Prize winner.

The amount of research Egan must have done for this book must be phenomenal as we seem to be presented with several books in one. Some of the stories were engaging, but unfortunately others, or parts of others, were not. I was also quite confused at times when it seemed to become very 'American' in it's language using many terms I did not understand.

I loved Anna and her story, and I enjoyed Eddie and his tales of escaping death but I really don't think we needed Dexter Styles at all, especially as it was chapters related to him that I found most confusing. I think he was have been better off in a book of his own.

At times I felt that I just had to struggle on in order to complete it in order to write my review, then, suddenly out of the blue it would once again become an enthralling story.

The passages relating to Anna's training as a diver and Eddie's nautical endeavours stand out overall for me but I'm afraid the ending was rather rushed and unsatisfactory.

Jennifer Egan is quite obviously a very talented writer but I'm afraid that at times I found this book quite a chore and at others an absolute delight, I have never felt so at odds with my opinion of one book.

One of the best books I've read this year.

The Blurb:

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.

This is a well written but very confusing book. First of all I wasn't sure where it was set (the title should have told me) or when it was set. I eventually worked out it was set in one of the World Wars, but couldn't work out which one. I realised it was World War 2, but still found it confusing.

The timeline kept jumping - one chapter we were in 1938, then it was 1943, but no indication that it had changed years. Because of this I was confused with who was who especially when in one chapter somebody had died, but in the next chapter was alive again.

Like I said, this is a well written book, but ultimately one I didn't really enjoy. 2.5*

I haven’t read any of Jennifer Egan’s fiction before although I’ve always meant to get to her Pulitzer Prize winning “A Visit from the Good Squad” – especially after enjoying so much the varied selection of stories found in the “Best American Short Stories 2014” anthology which Egan guest edited that year. I’ve heard the way Egan handles time in her writing and her method of structuring a story is quite experimental. So it was somewhat surprising to discover that “Manhattan Beach” is constructed like a much more traditional historical novel, but one that is done so powerfully well it reads as a totally innovative and striking take on NYC life during WWII.

The story centres around the life of a young woman named Anna who works in the Naval Shipyard factories and her determination to become a diver working on the submerged hulls of ships and underwater pipelines. Running through the novel is the mystery of what happened to her father Ed who vanished from their family life leaving Anna and her mother Agnes alone to care for her severely physically and mentally disabled younger sister Lydia. She seeks answers about her father’s fate from Dexter Styles, an influential local gangster who, despite his power, finds himself precariously caught between a godfather-like crime boss whose network of schemes he oversees and his respectable high-society father-in-law. Anna and Dexter’s lives intersect and they separately reach a crisis point which requires them to radically alter their lives. It’s an atmospheric tale bouncing between sparkling star-studded gangster-run clubs to the plight of shipwrecked sailors to the murky bottom of Wallabout Bay. It’s as captivating in its portrayal of a working class single woman as it is in the way it shows larger American societal shifts amidst cataclysmic wartime losses.

Egan’s descriptive prose are so engaging. These include evocative observations about life working in a wartime factory, the social order of navy life and the complex workings of the criminal underworld. But there are also subtle portrayals about physical development. For instance, when Ed is an adolescent it’s remarked: “He’d turned twelve, tall and scrawny, fastened together with muscles like leather thongs.” It’s especially poignant when Egan shows Anna’s attempt to form an emotional connection with Lydia who is physically limited in how she can communicate. There are also beautifully profound moments when Anna finally dives underwater and experiences an entirely different world free from the complexity of life on the surface. It’s almost like the readers’ senses are adjusted alongside Anna’s so we can experience a vision of clouded water and the sounds inside her diver’s helmet.

Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently are the ways prejudice is portrayed in novels and the degree to which we can distinguish a character’s perspective from the authorial voice. There are several scenes where uncomfortable remarks are made about different immigrant communities in NYC, but it was clear that these are mediated through the perspective of Dexter and are bound with this character’s social prejudices. It becomes even more evident that this is the case when Dexter at one point comes to interact with Lydia and he refers to her only as “the cripple.” This shows how he really doesn’t consider her an individual and can’t see past her disability or consider her humanity. It’s all the more tragic when Ed recalls spending time with a young Lydia and the acute shame and disgust he feels towards his daughter’s condition. Egan also writes compellingly about the complex commanding order of shipmates and how traditional social orders amongst different racial groups are scrambled in this unique environment.

Like all great historical fiction, this novel has something to say about the world we’re living in right now. When Dexter’s father-in-law is speculating about America’s position in the global community he surmises “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.” Today, consumerism has run rampant and personal debt threatens to throw us all into a tailspin again at any moment while stripping the environment down to the bone. It’s interesting to consider the ways in which America’s global influence could have been different after the war if the forces in power were motivated by something other than profit.

“Manhattan Beach” was overall a joy to read and it includes a sassy, free-thinking aunt named Brianne who ultimately became my favourite character.

Anna is a strong lead character in this book and one with grit and determination. The story of her family and life unfold during the Depression. You are led into the different worlds around New York from high society to gangsters.

Would recommend this book.

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book

sorry to say it was not my sort of book...well written from what i managed to read its just not the genre that i like sorry

I must confess to not overly enjoying the first third of the book. It painted the scene against which the story developed and most certainly 'had you there' such was the well researched and descriptive writing skills of Jennifer Egan.
Things really got interesting when Anna started work checking small components and later progressing to becoming a diver. I felt I was Anna in the diving dress and even felt the compression of the canvas around her calves as she lowered herself in to the water. Her description of adjusting her buoyancy and the floating feeling after enduring the pressing weight of the shoulder plate and helmet 'top side' made me feel I was with her. The well explained perils of diving never seemed so real.
Finally, Eddie's story and the time in the merchant marine. Absolutely spot on and gripping stuff especially when adrift in the lifeboat. The ending was true to life, nothing monumental more pragmatic.
Overall, I'm so glad I read it, extensively researched and carefully crafted.

The book follows the story of Anna, from being a young girl through to a young woman, in war-time America. Her father has rather dubious business connections and she becomes involved in them. I found the start of this book captivating and thought I was in for a real treat but sadly it failed to deliver. The storyline seemed to wander in the middle and felt rushed to a conclusion at the end.

I love this - I am only half way through but love it already. It reminds me of Anne Tyler, that spare, vintage feel to the writing.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher Little Brown Book Group for providing my review copy in exchange for my honest review.
Well after a 'Visit from the Goon squad' this is a completely different type of story. You can read the blurb to pick up a good resume and I do not want to spoil your trip by going into it here. I will say you can fall into one of two schools. Those who like to puzzle out what is really going on (that's my school) and those who want to be clear as your go. If you are in the latter then possibly this book is not for you. If the former then I suggest you dive in and enjoy the chilling ride. You may find yourself being pulled up short by your own perspective on what you've read or could it be your natural prejudices? Take it on the chin and be prepared for your mind to keep mulling over Jennifer Egan's plot.

At the heart of Manhattan Beach lies the sea, a dark, dangerous, unknowable entity mirrored onshore by the dark, dangerous, unknowable force which is the mafia. Both sea and mob touch all the characters' lives in one way or another, drawing them close and sucking them down.
This epic novel has a deceptively slow opening, to the point of my wondering when something was going to happen. But it's a subtler book than that, a study of interwoven lives, of the struggles and losses of people whose anchors have slipped, adrift in a world immeasurably altered by war.
With shady mafia deals beginning on page one, I expected violence, but that's subtle too. There's a constant level of threat, personified in a single scene with the seemingly immortal Mr Q, where the gently rustic occupation of canning peaches masterfully invokes a subtle horror.
All the characters feel drawn from life, and every sentence is beautifully crafted into a story which becomes utterly compelling. Manhattan Beach is a long voyage of a read, but I was more than content to be carried away on its tide. A wonderful winter read, highly recommended.

Beautifully realised. This was a hard one to pin down genre-wise; it has something of the gothic, a historical feel, a war story, a feminist tale, a noirish gangster thriller, a gripping shipwreck spin-off, a familial drama about loss and betrayal and love but for all the tendrils reaching into unexpected places, it never felt unmoored.

Anna is a likeable heroine with an appealing blend of vulnerability and grit, but what surprised and impressed me about this novel, was how Egan got me to root for the least likeable characters; I always love a writer who can claw back some sympathy for the fatally flawed. Eddie Kerrigan, Dexter Styles - weak and greedy respectively, belatedly at odds with their emerging morality - shouldn't have been able to make me wince at their onrushing downfall, and yet I did.

The language is simply gorgeous too, creating beauty and harmony out of unlikely candidates: Brrooklyn's Naval Yard, an abandoned boathouse, a crippled girl's trip to a winter shore, a seedy nightclub, a merchant ship. I felt completely immersed in a world I found entirely unfamiliar - a wonderful read.

I loved this book. Was already a fan and this one is even better than the last one!

"He would die to stay alive, to savor the sensuous gallop of his thoughts toward some truth he hadn't yet perceived."

I'm still not sure how I feel about Manhattan Beach. It has a strange way of encroaching on you and, even though it's not a thrill a minute, you can't put it down. And yet, I felt that the story was a bit too meandering and had too many different directions, many of which came to nothing in the end.

I like a slow moving story, but Manhattan Beach seemed to have lots of offshoots that didn't really go anywhere. There were also characters that cropped up then disappeared again, seemingly without adding much to the main flow.

Egan's writing is lovely but I felt slightly detached most of the time, as though I was observing through a bubble, or, fittingly, through a diving suit. This is more evident in Eddie's narration, which seemed to have more of a removed feel than Anna and Dexter's.

I liked Anna, I empathised with a lot of what she was going through and her story shows how difficult it was, even in a time when women were being taken more seriously, to achieve her dreams. In fact, all the main characters felt very real. Even the slightly larger than life character of Dexter Styles, who could so easily have been a typical two-dimensional gangster, is given layers by Egan.

I like the story told from the three different narratives, this is a device that I usually enjoy as it allows the reader to see events from different perspectives and it's a good way to reveal plot twists and secrets. Sometimes the jumps in time were a little confusing though, espicially in Eddie's sections.

Manhattan Beach was easy to read, in that is is written beautifully, yet I felt the flow of the story wasn't quite right; some aspects which to me seemed big were skimmed over while other small events were lingered on. There were also some elements to the story that I found non-realistic. Not that Anna would become a female diver, it's unusual yes but there were women doing it, but smaller elements that seemed to be put in for convenience, or for plot devices which felt too ridiculous. One small example is when Anna manages to untie a complex knot while wearing a diving suit and gloves by closing her eyes and just feeling it. A little too convenient and felt a bit fairy tale-ish. There are larger examples but I can't reveal them without giving away spoilers.

Still, although I had issues with the story, I really enjoyed the backdrop of Manhattan Beach, war time New York, and learning about the underworld, the docks and the diving.

I've read a few reviews that says this book doesn't live up to Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad. I've not read any of her other work so can't compare, but she's obviously a very talented writer, I'd like to read more, to see if I get on better with one of her other novels.

My Review: 3/5

I received a copy of Manhattan Beach via NetGalley in return for an honest review. My thanks to the author and publisher.

This novel is set in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan is nearly 12 years old. She accompanies her father to the house of a man whom she learns is crucial to the survival of her family. Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna becomes the first female diver, a dangerous and exclusive occupation, repairing ships that will help America win the war. Anna is the sole provider for her mother and her severely disabled sister.

For me, the book started off really well for about 25% , then I really don't know what happened to make this change. Maybe it was because of all the dead ends and the red herrings. It all seemed a bit underdeveloped. There were parts of the book that were really good and well written. Maybe it was just me, overthinking everything. I'm sure there will be lots of readers who will really love this book and it won't stop me reading more from the author in future.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Little, Brown Book Group UK, and the author Jennifer Egan for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.