"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
"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)
"A novel that deserves to join the canon of New York stories."-- Amor Towles, New York Times Book Review
"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
"Manhattan Beach is ambitiously and deliciously plot-driven." -NPR's Fresh Air
"Egan's first foray into historical fiction makes you forget you're reading historical fiction at all."--Elle
* Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction * New York Times Bestseller * A San Francisco Chronicle Top 10 Book of the Year * A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of 2017 * A Time magazine and USA Today Top 10 Novel of 2017 * Winner of the Booklist Top of the List for Fiction * Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction * Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, The Guardian, Vogue, Esquire, Kirkus Reviews, Philadelphia Inquirer, BookPage, Bustle, Southern Living, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Immensely satisfying...an old-fashioned page-turner, tweaked by this witty and sophisticated writer...Egan is masterly at displaying mastery...she works a formidable kind of magic." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times The daring and magnificent novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.
Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father's life, the reasons he might have vanished.
"A magnificent achievement, at once a suspenseful noir intrigue and a transporting work of lyrical beauty and emotional heft" (
The Boston Globe), "Egan's first foray into historical fiction makes you forget you're reading historical fiction at all" (
Elle).
Manhattan Beach takes us into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men in a dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.