The New York Times Book Review - Amor Towles
…a more traditional novel than the raucous and inventive Goon Squad, although the two books offer many of the same pleasures, including fine turns of phrase, a richly imagined environs and a restless investigation into human nature…A central satisfaction of the novel resides in how far-flung Egan's characters will become and what varied terrain they will explore, before being inevitably drawn back together…Manhattan Beach is principally a novel of New York. As such, it inevitably pays tribute to the city's iconography…But these familiar landmarks are not the focus of Egan's narrative. Refreshingly, Egan and her characters turn their backs on a Manhattan interior defined by subways and skyscrapers, Broadway and Wall Street, to look outward to sea…The prevalence of the ocean in this story is not simply atmospheric; it is central to the symbolism…For Anna the sight of the sea provides an "electric mix of attraction and dread" while for Eddie it's "an infinite hypnotic expanse" and for Dexter it's "never the same on any two days, not if you really looked." Egan really looks, and so do her characters. Turning their backs on the crowded constraints of their urban lives, all three look to the ocean as a realm that while inherently dangerous also promises the potential for personal discovery and an almost mystical liberty. This is a novel that deserves to join the canon of New York stories.
The New York Times - Dwight Garner
One definition of a great novel, William Styron said, is that it should "leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it." Jennifer Egan's immensely satisfying fifth novel, Manhattan Beach…has a good deal of that kind of life-swamping and life-supplementing effect. It's a dreadnought of a World War II-era historical novel, bristling with armaments yet intimate in tone. It's an old-fashioned page-turner, tweaked by this witty and sophisticated writer so that you sometimes feel she has retrofitted sleek new engines inside a craft owned for too long by James Jones and Herman Wouk…Egan is a generous writer. She doesn't write dialogue, for example, so much as she writes repartee. Many writers' books go slack when their characters open their mouths, as if dullness equals verisimilitude. Egan's minty dialogue snaps you to attention…Egan works a formidable kind of magic…This is a big novel that moves with agility. It's blissfully free of rust and sepia tint. It introduces us to a memorable young woman who is, as Cathy longed to be again in Wuthering Heights, "half savage and hardy, and free."
Publishers Weekly - Audio
★ 11/27/2017
Lind has a lovely, low, breathy voice and the ability to foster the tension, fear, and fearlessness that fill Egan’s finely wrought historical novel. The story is set in the Brooklyn Naval Yard during WWII, where women engage in the urgent work of war while the men are abroad. Actor Lind is captivating from the start as Anna Kerrigan, who, as a brash 11-year old, goes with her father and his boss, Dexter Styles, to Manhattan Beach, where she removes her shoes to feel the icy water on her feet. Anna grows up to fight her way into the very male world of underwater divers, scouring the sea bottom for lost objects, repairing damaged warships, and searching for the remains of her father, who disappeared when she was young and who she comes to suspect is dead. Like Anna, each character has an intimate and complex relation to the sea that can engender birth, healing, and bliss, as well as dread, destruction, and death. Butz handles his narrative sections nicely, creating an especially convincing characterization of Styles, and Piazza imbues a beautiful and terrifying wartime sea scene with all the drama it deserves. The stellar performances of three voice actors make this the type of audiobook that will convert people to the format. A Scribner hardcover. (Oct.)
Publishers Weekly
★ 05/08/2017
Pulitzer-winner Egan's splendid novel begins in 1934 Brooklyn as Eddie Kerrigan struggles to support his wife and two daughters, one of whom is severely disabled. He finds work as a bagman, ferrying bribes for a corrupt union official. One day he brings his healthy daughter, Anna, to the Manhattan Beach home of Dexter Styles, a nightclub owner with underworld partners. The 11-year-old can't comprehend their business, but she senses that the two men have become "friends." By the time Anna is 19, Eddie has inexplicably vanished and America is in the Second World. Working a dull job inspecting ship parts at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, Anna seizes the opportunity to become the first female civilian diver there. Around the same time, a second encounter with Dexter Styles raises hopes that he can help untangle the mysteries of her father's disappearance. As the stories eddy through time, Egan makes haunting use of shore and water motifs to balance dense period detail and explore the liminal spaces—between strength and weakness, depth and surface, past and future, life and death—through which her protagonists move. More straightforwardly narrated than some of Egan's earlier work, including the celebrated A Visit from the Goon Squad, the novel is 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. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners. (Oct.)
The Washington Post
Jennifer Egan is . . . dizzyingly inventive.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Jennifer Egan is a writer of tremendous intelligence and grace.
The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
Is there anything Egan can’t do?
From the Publisher
"A bounteous miracle that makes you feel that past time, and our time, differently; everything becomes freshly energized, infused with humanity, vital, sad, and full of importance. To see the world through Egan’s eyes is to be moved, through language, to new adoration of the world. I don’t know a better writer working today. There is a generosity in her prose that is vastly enlivening to its reader and brings about that beautiful effect fiction sometimes causes: more, and better-grounded, fondness for reality, just as it is."
—George Saunders
"Manhattan Beach is so rich in detail and atmosphere; such an exploration of underworlds of all kinds, filled with lessons on lifelines and buoyancy and how to bear life’s weight by diving deep into it. Jennifer Egan has masterfully conjured an era we are on the cusp of losing. Her novel is an absorbing story, beautifully written. Its strands of subtle intrigue and quiet heroism make you reluctant to leave each page while eager to get to the next."
—M.L. Stedman
"A novel that deserves to join the canon of New York stories."
—Amor Towles, New York Times Book Review
“Manhattan Beach is ambitiously and deliciously plot-driven.”
—NPR's Fresh Air
“...dares to satisfy us in a way that stories of an earlier age used to.”
—Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“An unusually well written, well researched, emotionally satisfying page-turner . . . Manhattan Beach is the kind of book you can immerse yourself in happily.”
—Heller McAlpin, San Francisco Chronicle
“Jennifer Egan . . . continues a string of wildly various and imaginative novels with Manhattan Beach... The thrill of her novels is in the dive to places unknown.”
—Alexandra Wolfe, Wall Street Journal
“Rich, brilliant, capacious . . . Egan has every gift a writer can possess . . . . Moving, mournful, and often profound.”
—USA Today
“Egan’s most remarkable accomplishment yet. . . . At once a suspenseful novel of noir intrigue, a gorgeously wrought and richly allusive literary tapestry, and a transporting work of lyrical beauty and emotional heft, Manhattan Beach is a magnificent achievement.”
—Priscilla Gilman, The Boston Globe
“[Egan has a] talent for dazzling, specific descriptions that animate each chapter, and dialogue that rings true to her memorable characters and their era.”
—Eileen Weiner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“What Jennifer Egan gives us in Manhattan Beach . . . is good, old-fashioned writing—or old-fashioned good writing, which is something else again.”
—Ellen Akins, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“A story of Dickensian ambition that benefits mightily from [Egan’s] meticulous attention to detail and her rich, evocative language.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Manhattan Beach is... beautifully written throughout... But for an author who won literature’s highest accolade for a book based on its uniqueness, it’s perhaps even more impressive that she can also write a fantastic novel that is, at least on the surface, as classic as they come.”
—GQ
“Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan makes her maiden deep dive into historical fiction with the vivid Manhattan Beach.”
—Vanity Fair
“[Egan’s] prose moves in a way that feels effortless, a sure sign that it’s anything but. . . . It’s the best sort of historical fiction, transporting the reader to another place without ever loosing bonds of the familiar. Egan’s characters are vivid, their authenticity a kind of wonder, their losses and joys achingly true. . . . Egan sets the knot, and we are all in thrall.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine
"Highly atmospheric... immediate... expertly written"
—Goop
“The novel’s crooked politicians, organized-crime bosses, and shady cops make it read like a fast-paced, hard-boiled drama.”
—Marie Claire
“Exquisitely wrought.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“This truly fine novel, so rich in period and emotional atmosphere and so cunningly plotted, is a joy — one of the standouts of the year.”
—Newsday
“A richly imagined portrait of a bygone era.”
—Houston Chronicle
“Genuinely affecting and handsomely constructed. It moves for all the right reasons.”
—The Independent UK
“A work of remarkable cinematic scope. . . . This is a novel that will pull you in and under and carry you away on its rip tides. . . . Its resonances continue to wash over the reader long after the novel ends.”
—The Guardian UK
“Intricately patterned and visionary . . . .Manhattan Beach . . . plunges into the past to discover what lies beneath the surface of our own world.”
—The Atlantic
“Reading Manhattan Beach feels restorative . . . deeply imagined . . . [and] very, very welcome.”
—Slate
“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
"Ambitious, compassionate, engrossing.”
—Francine Prose, The New York Review of Books
“Egan’s first foray into historical fiction makes you forget you’re reading historical fiction at all.”
—Elle
“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
“Manhattan Beach is an enthralling work of historical fiction that weaves together beautiful imagery, an immersive story, and compelling characters into a single story of family secrets and unconditional love.”
—My San Antonio
“It’s an astutely executed piece of historical literature that’s also unafraid to indulge in the thrills of its rich plot.”
—Minneapolis City Pages
“Jennifer Egan does everything right as a novelist, with vivid characters and surprising enough plot twists... but she pushes all her work some notches higher with her evocation of what it feels like to be the first woman to experience the previously forbidden world of undersea divers.”
—Buffalo News
“Manhattan Beach” is an old-fashioned page-turner that more than delivers on the foreboding promise of its 'Treasure Island'-like opening set piece. The book is a Whitmanesque mosaic that truly does 'embrace multitudes.'”
—Brooklyn Daily Eagle
“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)
“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)
“This large, ambitious novel shows Egan at the top of her game. Anna is a true feminist heroine, and her grit and tenacity will make readers root for her.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
Time - Joe Klein
Praise for Jennifer Egan:
“Jennifer Egan may well be the best living American novelist.”
Booklist (starred review)
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
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
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.
Chicago Tribune
Groundbreaking... Features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn’t, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Audacious, extraordinary.
Time
A new classic of American fiction.
San Francisco Chronicle
At once intellectually stimulating and moving.
Los Angeles Times
The smartest book you can get your hands on.
The New York Times Book Review
Pitch perfect... Darkly, ripplingly funny... Egan possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart.
Library Journal - Audio
05/15/2018
An 11-year-old's daring 1934 dip at Brooklyn's Manhattan Beach introduces the tautly twisted threads of Egan's first novel since 2011's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad. This tripart historical hybrid—part family saga, part noirish mystery, part testimony to women's war-fueled empowerment—features Heather Lind as adventurous tween Anna Kerrigan; Norbert Leo Butz as Anna's father, Eddie; and Vincent Piazza as Eddie's boss Dexter Styles. Lind seamlessly matures into bold, independent Anna who becomes the Brooklyn Navy Yard's first female scuba diver. Butz voices Eddie, initially a yes-man to Styles, who disappears from his family but not from the narrative; Butz exhibits the greatest range, showcasing his facility with accents to create additional global characters. Piazza, too, convincingly embodies a roster of lesser characters in addition to Styles, who is both socialite and gangster. Aural direction takes a less-than-effective turn when dialog between major characters is obviously spliced together—for example, in an especially intimate scene, Anna and Dexter sound more like they're conversing from separate tunnels than in the same space. VERDICT Despite occasional production glitches, the separate strengths of the narrating trio make this Beach a worthwhile destination. ["This large, ambitious novel shows Egan at the top of her game": LJ 9/1/17 starred review of the Scribner hc.]—Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC
Library Journal
★ 09/01/2017
The latest from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad) centers on the Brooklyn Naval Yard during World War II. Anna Kerrigan lives with her mother and disabled sister, Lydia, her father having disappeared years earlier. She works measuring ship parts at the yard but longs to be a diver, doing salvage and repair underwater. At first by chance and later by design, she encounters Dexter Styles, a gangster who may know something about her father's disappearance. Along the way, Anna usually takes the most reckless path, rarely considering the long-term consequences. The setting is rich and textured, and unexpected turns of phrase, such as a male naval officer being described as petite, startle and delight. Egan offers thrilling accounts of shipwreck and of Anna's diving training, avoiding most clichés in her depictions of the criminal underworld inhabited by Dexter and Anna's father, as well as the motivations and conflicted loyalties that that life brings. VERDICT This large, ambitious novel shows Egan at the top of her game. Anna is a true feminist heroine, and her grit and tenacity will make readers root for her. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 4/19/17.]—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
OCTOBER 2017 - AudioFile
A trio of narrators deftly weave their voices to bring to life the breathtaking story of Anna Kerrigan; her father, Eddie; and the gangster Dexter Styles. Heather Lind’s voice matures as Anna grows from a curious child into an ambitious woman who is fighting to become a diver for the Brooklyn Naval Yard during WWII. Anna’s anger over her abandonment by her father guides her to Styles, made gruff and imposing by Vincent Piazza. Listeners learn Eddie’s secrets through Norbert Leo Butz’s steady narration, which shifts into despair and terror so suddenly that he will make you gasp aloud in shock. The promise and danger of the sea are central to this story, and Egan plumbs their depths as the narrators bring intensity to the characters’ intertwined fates. E.E.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2017-06-20
After stretching the boundaries of fiction in myriad ways (including a short story written in Tweets), Pulitzer Prize winner Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010, etc.) does perhaps the only thing left that could surprise: she writes a thoroughly traditional novel.It shouldn't really be surprising, since even Egan's most experimental work has been rich in characters and firmly grounded in sharp observation of the society around them. Here, she brings those qualities to a portrait of New York City during the Depression and World War II. We meet 12-year-old Anna Kerrigan accompanying her adored father, Eddie, to the Manhattan Beach home of suave mobster Dexter Styles. Just scraping by "in the dregs of 1934," Eddie is lobbying Styles for a job; he's sick of acting as bagman for a crooked union official, and he badly needs money to buy a wheelchair for his severely disabled younger daughter, Lydia. Having rapidly set up these situations fraught with conflict, Egan flashes forward several years: Anna is 19 and working at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, the sole support of Lydia and their mother since Eddie disappeared five years earlier. Adult Anna is feisty enough to elbow her way into a job as the yard's first female diver and reckless enough, after she runs into him at one of his nightclubs, to fall into a one-night stand with Dexter, who initially doesn't realize whose daughter she is. Disastrous consequences ensue for them both but only after Egan has expertly intertwined three narratives to show us what happened to Eddie while drawing us into Anna's and Dexter's complicated longings and aspirations. The Atlantic and Indian oceans play significant roles in a novel saturated by the sense of water as a vehicle of destiny and a symbol of continuity (epigraph by Melville, naturally). A fatal outcome for one appealing protagonist is balanced by Shakespearean reconciliation and renewal for others in a tender, haunting conclusion. Realistically detailed, poetically charged, and utterly satisfying: apparently there's nothing Egan can't do.