And Dexter too longs to taste “freedom from the constraints of time and space,” finding in his relationship and adventures with Anna just such an aperture of newness.Įgan deftly and movingly joins “Manhattan Beach’s’’ ostensibly very different characters with surprising parallelisms, arresting images, and an ethically capacious gaze. Diving becomes the literal enactment of Anna’s larger quest for freedom from her gender identity, her family, her social roles. An ardent fan of Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, and Rex Stout, Anna is at once invigorated and unsettled as her own life increasingly mirrors their work, with the apparent “winnowing of diffuse danger to a single corrupt soul.’’Īnna immerses herself in mystery and danger both as a quasi-detective and as the first female diver in the Brooklyn Naval Yard, repairing ships for the war effort. Enlisting Dexter’s help with that, she also begins to see him as the key to solving the puzzle of her father’s disappearance. Preternaturally attuned to her father’s moods, Anna relishes “the satisfaction of sharing a secret with her father, of pleasing him uniquely,” yet senses that this visit has an ominous significance.Īfter a smug doctor pronounces Lydia incurable, Anna conceives the idea of taking her sister to see the ocean.
There she plays with Styles’s pampered daughter, Tabatha, and at her father’s behest, forges a connection with the enigmatic Styles. She’s accompanying her beloved father, Eddie, a stevedore turned bagman for a corrupt union official, on a business visit to the luxurious Manhattan Beach home of Dexter Styles. When the story opens, it’s 1934, and Anna Kerrigan is almost 12. It is also Egan’s most remarkable accomplishment yet. “Manhattan Beach’’ is a work of historical fiction, set in Depression and World War II-era New York City, with a colorful cast of characters including showgirls, union men, sailors, gangsters. At first glance, Jennifer Egan’s new novel, her first since the Pulitzer-Prize-winning “A Visit from the Goon Squad,’’ appears strikingly conventional for a writer typically associated with technical virtuosity and formal innovation.
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