![]() ![]() The dress baffled his movements and the shoes rooted him to the pier, giving the impression of a tree harried by a gale. He rose from the bench and began to thrash. The front tender tapped the top of the helmet, meaning that Olmstead should stand and be inspected by Lieutenant Axel. Manhattan Beach feels like several stories in one, all struggling to come together, all lacking cohesion, none of them emotionally engaging. The hat alone weighs fifty-six.") a matter of high suspense and metaphor: Especially at the beginning, Egan strains to convince. Manhattan Beach is ambitiously and deliciously plot-driven, and it boldly helps itself to a wide library of earlier New York stories. Egan makes dressing for a dive ("The dress weighs two hundred pounds. In the opening pages of Manhattan Beach Jennifer Egan’s first novel since she won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for A Visit From the Goon Squad an 11-year-old girl named. Like every good historical novel Ive ever read, the storyline of this one is as hokey as hell and completely transporting. She percolates the story with Flossie Flirt dolls, a '28 Duesenberg Model J (Niagara blue), the charitable ladies of the New York Catholic Protectory, Benny Goodman-style swing, and such a profusion of details regarding big-ship construction and underwater repair that you'd expect to be just slightly inclined to read a little faster through those pages, but you are not. ![]() Egan builds her story with the countless particulars of her chosen era - America at war, Americans at nightclubs, gangsters and sailors and union workers all fighting for a slice of a diminished post-Depression pie. ![]()
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