Manhattan Beach: Jennifer Egan - Softcover

Egan, Jennifer

3.62

86,970 ratings by Goodreads

9781472150882: Manhattan Beach: Jennifer Egan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1472150880 ISBN 13: 9781472150882

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LONGLISTED for the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

The daring and magnificent novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad.

"Immensely satisfying...an old-fashioned page-turner, tweaked by this witty and sophisticated writer...Egan is masterly at displaying mastery...she works a formidable kind of magic." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"Dares to satisfy us in a way that stories of an earlier age used to." --Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"Egan's prose is transparent and elegant...But the chief joy of reading Manhattan Beach lies in diving under the surface pleasures of the plot (which are plentiful--it's immersive and compelling), and sinking slowly to its dark and unknowable depths. There are deep truths there." --Vox

"Excellent...Manhattan Beach is a fleet, sinuous epic, abounding with evocative details and felicitous metaphors...[it] magnificently captures the country on the brink of triumph and triumphalism." --Bookforum

"Egan's first foray into historical fiction makes you forget you're reading historical fiction at all." --Elle

Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.

Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father's life, the reasons he might have vanished.

With the atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan's first historical novel follows Anna and Styles into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men. Manhattan Beach is a deft, dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world. It is a magnificent novel by the author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, one of the great writers of our time.

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Review:

Praise for Jennifer Egan:

"Jennifer Egan may well be the best living American novelist."

--Joe Klein "Time "

Advanced Praise for Manhattan Beach:

"Egan's propulsive, surprising, ravishing, and revelatory saga, a covertly profound page-turner that will transport and transform every reader, casts us all as divers in the deep, searching for answers, hope, and ascension." --Booklist (starred review)

"Tremendously assured and rich, moving from depictions of violence and crime to deep tenderness. The book's emotional power once again demonstrates Egan's extraordinary gifts." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"After stretching the boundaries of fiction in myriad ways...Egan does perhaps the only thing left that could surprise: she writes a thoroughly traditional novel. Realistically detailed, poetically charged, and utterly satisfying: apparently there's nothing Egan can't do." --Kirkus (starred review)

Praise for Jennifer Egan:

"Jennifer Egan may well be the best living American novelist." --Joe Klein, Time

"Jennifer Egan is a writer of tremendous intelligence and grace." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Jennifer Egan is . . . dizzyingly inventive." --The Washington Post

"Is there anything Egan can't do?" --The New York Times Book Review (cover review)

Advance Praise for Manhattan Beach:

Book Description:

The long-awaited novel from the bestselling author of Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit From the Goon Squad.

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