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Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan (view source)
Revision as of 11:34, 24 July 2017
, 11:34, 24 July 2017no edit summary
Meanwhile, Anna is fixated on the idea of becoming one of the divers undertaking underwater repairs on ships in the Naval Yard. Against the odds, she eventually becomes the only female diver. It's fascinating to read about the reality of diving in the 1940s, starting with putting on the extremely heavy metal suit. Egan clearly did a mountain of research to be able to describe Anna's dives convincingly – she mentions in the acknowledgments that she first started researching this book in 2004. In other places, though, the evidence of her historical research is too obvious, with brand names, slang, and war developments peppered in so thickly that they don't suggest the time period so much as shove it down your throat.
I couldn't help but compare this in my mind with Egan's previous novel, the highly original [[A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan\|A Visit From the Goon Squad]], which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011. That book was so impressive because it captured the present moment perfectly and took risks with narration, including a chapter in the second person and another in the form of a Powerpoint presentation. By comparison, ''Manhattan Beach'' is merely serviceable historical fiction and tended to lose my interest when it dove into flashbacks to Eddie's earlier life or veered away to spend lots of time with Dexter Styles. My interest was only ever in Anna, so these sections prioritising other characters felt rather like time wasted. I also thought the approximation of Lydia's thought life was almost offensive.
This novel was born out of a fascination with New York City's little-known waterfront history, and some of my favourite passages were indeed atmospheric accounts of Brooklyn Navy Yard, like this one: ''In the rich late-October sunlight, the Naval Yard arrayed itself before her with the precision of a diagram: ships of all sizes berthed four deep on pronglike piers. In the dry docks, ships were held in place by hundreds of filament ropes, like Gulliver tied to the beach. The hammerhead crane brandished its fist to the east; to the west loomed the building ways cages. Around all of it, railroad tracks spiraled into whorls of paisley.''