She’d been fending off that danger ever since. It was here she’d first perceived the suctioning dark and felt its danger. But every good historical novel balances the historic and the personal, and Egan does that in her thoughtful exploration of Anna as a character. It’s also a deep-dive (forgive the pun) into the Irish and Italian under-world of the time.
This is a historical novel about the Depression and WWII, particularly the naval work in New York that supported the war effort.
But an encounter with Dexter Styles reminds her how much she never knew about her father. Anna thought she gave up on her father long ago, even before he abandoned the family. She’s fascinated by the sea and wants to become a diver, but there are no women divers at the time. Years later, her father has disappeared and Anna is doing war work at a Navy Yard factory and living with her mother and her severely disabled sister. The book begins when she’s eleven and accompanies her father to the posh Brooklyn home of Dexter Styles for an important business meeting. Manhattan Beach tells the story of Anna, who grows up during the time of World War II. If you loved Goon Squad, this book isn’t anything like that one, but don’t let that keep you from reading it. If you’re a Jennifer Egan fan, you’ve already heard that this book is a bit different from her others, in that it’s traditional historical fiction.
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