The New Yorker interviewed Egan about the writing process. After a series of events that leaves him dead and Anna pregnant, Anna relocates to San Francisco where she reconnects with her father. As she probes him for information, they become attracted to one another. She tries to conceal her identity from him, and also tries to discover the fate of her father. She recognizes him but does not wish to be known as a Kerrigan. There, Anna is shocked to recognize Styles, who she sees as a link to her missing father. Anna accompanies a coworker to one of the nightclubs to meet the coworker's married lover. Styles, who married into New York society and has risen as a crime boss, owns several nightclubs. Lydia's disability is much like cerebral palsy she observes the world around her but cannot communicate. Anna's mother ignores her to focus on Lydia's needs. She faces the difficulty of being the first woman diver at the Navy Yard.Īt their modest Irish-heritage home, Anna supports the family on her income. Against the wishes of diving officer Axel, she changes jobs to start working on underwater repairs. One day she sees a professional diver and starts training to be one. She also takes classes at Brooklyn College.

She has a repetitive job measuring small metal parts with a micrometer.

In 1942 at the age of 19, Anna is working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to make warships for the US Navy in World War II. She keeps these trysts secret from her father, who disappears one day without a trace. Anna puts her bare feet into the wintry cold seawater at Manhattan Beach to prove her toughness this childish bravado makes a lasting impression on Styles.Īt the age of 14, Anna loses her virginity with 16-year-old Leon, a boy from the neighborhood, meeting him repeatedly in their building's cellar. Unknown to Anna, Eddie agrees to work for Styles in his gambling operations. Now he makes very little money as a bagman in the criminal underworld, and he tells Styles he needs money to pay for a wheelchair for his brain-damaged and paralyzed daughter, Lydia, Anna's younger sister. Eddie is a former vaudeville performer who switched to become a stockbroker during the Roaring Twenties, then was ruined in the Great Depression. Plot Įleven-going-on-twelve Anna Kerrigan and her father Eddie meet with gangster Dexter Styles in late 1934 at the Styles mansion on the shore of Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn, New York City. Time magazine selected it as one of its top ten novels of 2017. The National Book Foundation listed the book in their 2017 National Book Award Longlist in the Fiction category. Manhattan Beach is a historical novel by American writer Jennifer Egan.

Manhattan beach novel review