Ms. Hen reviews Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach

Jennifer Egan

Scribner

2017

Ms. Hen found this novel at the Little Free Library near where she lives recently, and since she had read another novel by the author and liked it, she picked this up. She immediately got swept away into another time and place, but one that seemed familiar to her.

This novel is different from the last few novels Ms. Hen has read in the way that it is long and winding, with lengthy chapters and complex characters. This is a novel that is meant to be chewed slowly and digested fully before the reader can fully understand what occurs.

MANHATTAN BEACH is about Anna, a young woman during the Depression and World War II in New York. Her father disappears when she is young, and nobody knows where he went. Her family suspects that he ran off, and hopes he has not be killed. When the war starts, she gets a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and eventually works as the first female diver working underwater on the ships. She meets Dexter Styles at a nightclub he owns, who she had met as a child when her father took her to his house. She discovers what happened to her father, but the plot twists and other events are discovered.

Ms. Hen thinks this novel captures the psychology of a time that does not exist anymore. The way women were treated by the men was despicable, and even though Ms. Hen knows that this is true to the past, she can’t help being disgusted by it. The world used to be much worse than it is now, especially for women and minorities. Anna works hard to prove herself to the men who are her coworkers, but she gets in trouble, and has to deal with her problem. She is crafty in the way that she handles her difficulty, which proves she is a person with intelligence and wiles.

Ms. Hen thought this novel was personally appealing to her, because it reminds her of her family history. During World War II, her grandfather worked in the Navy Yard in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and she imagines that world was similar to the one in the novel. Her grandfather didn’t go to war because by then, he had too many children. Her father was also in the Navy, so she has a connection to this sphere. The women who worked in the Navy Yard in the novel were waiting for the men to come home, but at the same time, they enjoyed themselves, and they made decent money. War changed things for the people back then, because they all had the same goal, and they admired the men who went off to fight.

This is not the type of novel that Ms. Hen usually reads. It’s long and winding, and is a type of mystery or noir thriller. Even so, she enjoyed it, and it’s a good book to read as the days are getting darker, and filled with promise of a new life, or at least a different life.