 | A WRITER'S WIT |  H. Ellis |
MY BOOK WORLD
Egan, Jennifer. Manhattan Beach. New York: Scribner, 2017.
From the Acknowledgements section of this novel, one may deduce that Egan took up to a decade to produce it. The tome is a historical novel of epic proportions set during WW II, with so much to research, right? A young woman works at a dull job measuring manufactured parts to make sure their sizes are correct. This woman named Anna is bored; rides a bike during her forty-five-minute lunch rather than choke down a sandwich from home with the marrieds, women who belittle her ambitions. She establishes a rapport with her supervisor, however, and with his help, goes on to become a diver, the first woman in New York to don a 250-pound diving suit and repair the skins of warships. Egan’s research makes her underwater scenes some of the most realistically invigorating I’ve ever read.
Meanwhile, Anna maintains a home life: a beautiful mother who is a former performer, a somewhat peripatetic father who deserts the family without explanation, and a sister disabled with an unnamed affliction (one might deduce the child is stricken with cerebral palsy), but that the disease is unidentified adds to its mystery, makes the child a wondrous, angel-faced enigma, whom Anna misses achingly when her sister dies. As the father has already disappeared from the scene, her mother moves to her childhood home in Minnesota, leaving Anna the family apartment to herself.
A third strand of the novel concerns itself with Anna’s father who crosses paths with a man from the underbelly of New York. Yet these men both maintain at least a superficial appearance of respectability, until the dirty business of doing illegal acts finally destroys them both. To avoid more spoilers, suffice it to say that each man winds up having a profound effect on Anna’s life. A father who leaves to service the war effort with the merchant marines. And the other man, the mystery man little Anna meets in the very first scene of the novel, well, his role is profound, too.
The conclusion of the novel, rather than serving as the denouement (neatly tying up loose ends like an Agatha Christie mystery), acts more like a coda (featuring extensions or reelaborations of earlier themes) you might note at the end of a musical composition. It serves more as the logical culmination to the crazed life a young woman lives in the 1940s, at the height of a war altering life worldwide. To me, Manhattan Beach should also be a Pulitzer Prize-winner, like Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (superbly noted for its nonlinear spectacularism). But what do I know. I’m merely a faithful reader of Egan’s work, madly in love with her intelligence, her perfect sentences, her mastery of structure, and most important, her incorruptible and universal understanding of the human condition. Brava!
From the Acknowledgements section of this novel, one may deduce that Egan took up to a decade to produce it. The tome is a historical novel of epic proportions set during WW II, with so much to research, right? A young woman works at a dull job measuring manufactured parts to make sure their sizes are correct. This woman named Anna is bored; rides a bike during her forty-five-minute lunch rather than choke down a sandwich from home with the marrieds, women who belittle her ambitions. She establishes a rapport with her supervisor, however, and with his help, goes on to become a diver, the first woman in New York to don a 250-pound diving suit and repair the skins of warships. Egan’s research makes her underwater scenes some of the most realistically invigorating I’ve ever read.
Meanwhile, Anna maintains a home life: a beautiful mother who is a former performer, a somewhat peripatetic father who deserts the family without explanation, and a sister disabled with an unnamed affliction (one might deduce the child is stricken with cerebral palsy), but that the disease is unidentified adds to its mystery, makes the child a wondrous, angel-faced enigma, whom Anna misses achingly when her sister dies. As the father has already disappeared from the scene, her mother moves to her childhood home in Minnesota, leaving Anna the family apartment to herself.
A third strand of the novel concerns itself with Anna’s father who crosses paths with a man from the underbelly of New York. Yet these men both maintain at least a superficial appearance of respectability, until the dirty business of doing illegal acts finally destroys them both. To avoid more spoilers, suffice it to say that each man winds up having a profound effect on Anna’s life. A father who leaves to service the war effort with the merchant marines. And the other man, the mystery man little Anna meets in the very first scene of the novel, well, his role is profound, too.
The conclusion of the novel, rather than serving as the denouement (neatly tying up loose ends like an Agatha Christie mystery), acts more like a coda (featuring extensions or reelaborations of earlier themes) you might note at the end of a musical composition. It serves more as the logical culmination to the crazed life a young woman lives in the 1940s, at the height of a war altering life worldwide. To me, Manhattan Beach should also be a Pulitzer Prize-winner, like Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (superbly noted for its nonlinear spectacularism). But what do I know. I’m merely a faithful reader of Egan’s work, madly in love with her intelligence, her perfect sentences, her mastery of structure, and most important, her incorruptible and universal understanding of the human condition. Brava!
Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Christopher Marlowe
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Laura Ingall's Wilder
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Martin Buber
FRI: My Book World | Christopher Brown, Tropic of Kansas
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Christopher Marlowe
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Laura Ingall's Wilder
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Martin Buber
FRI: My Book World | Christopher Brown, Tropic of Kansas
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