Manhattan Beach

This book was nothing like anything else I've read from Jennifer Egan, but it was a riveting read in its own right. If you are going into this expecting the character play of Goon Squad or the twist of The Keep, stop now. But if you're looking to be thoroughly engrossed in the world of the book in front of you and content to follow the very human story of the characters presented, you won't be disappointed.

I enjoyed parts of this story about a young woman with a missing father navigating work life in New York in World War II. Anna Kerrigan has a disabled younger sister whom her mother, a former showgirl, stays home to care for. Her father didn't come home one night when Anna was 12 and the family has given up trying to find out what happened to him. So, Anna goes out to work in a Naval Yard factory measuring ship parts, which is how she learns about naval diving and sets her heart on becoming a diver. This is the core of the story and the most sustained and coherent part.

There is more involving gang bosses and shady men that Anna's father had contacts with. This part of the story is less satisfying and has holes that I couldn't ignore. There were a couple of characters that were introduced only to be abandoned–one, Mr. Voss, who had seemed to be a significant character, was literally abandoned in a nightclub just when I thought he was about to become more significant, never to be heard from again. Finally, the ending was literally unbelievable, and left me disappointed with the novel as a whole.

jennifer egan is an incredibly transportive author - the diving scenes in this book were so vivid and evocative that i found myself rereading them again and again before moving on just because i wanted to relive the experience of diving in wallabout bay.