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.
