Eight million cities - about “Manhattan Beach” by Jennifer Egan.
Jennifer Egan received the Pulitzer Prize for her previous novel. It was in 2011, but "Manhattan Beach" she began to write even earlier. You can see that this novel is the result of a tedious, long-term work. Already the first pages are effectively transferring us to Brooklyn from the 1930s. The author took care of the details. Her New York is full of life, shipyard and small criminals are busy in the docks, gangsters reside in the back of the bars, boring kids are making fun of the tenement houses. During the reading you can almost feel the salty wind, the stuffiness of cramped flats, cigarette smoke.
Everything starts with a seemingly insignificant scene - a father with an eleven-year-old daughter, Anna, goes to visit a wealthy man, Mr. Styles. Anna is playing with the rich man's children, while her father will be touting with him some mysterious business. The girl goes with her newly met friend to the beach, where despite cold she pulls her shoes and wades in the icy water. Her father is not too happy, but his mysterious interlocutor seems to be impressed. He asks the girl what she felt. "It hurts only at the beginning," says Anna. - "Nothing feels after a moment".
This one-time, mysterious meeting will affect the life of all three. We will not be able to find out what really happened then, but we feel that this moment on the beach has changed them. Anna is still a child, but Mr. Styles has made an impression on her that it will not disappear in memory.
The author does not allow us to follow their fate in a calm way. Only a few scenes away we move forward a few years. Anna is already a nineteen-year-old. Some time ago her father did not come back home. She waited for him, not believing that he would just leave her. Did the responsibility for her disabled sister overwhelm him? He escaped? Or maybe he is dead? Anna does not have time to think about it. She must help her mother to support the family. She gets boring and exhausting work in the shipyard - II World War is underway, the Americans are building more warships, and that the hands are missing, women work in the shipyard en masse. Anna, is not satisfied. When she hears about training for divers, she realizes that she has always dreamed about something like that. About walking on the bottom of the sea.
The sea discovers a significant role in Manhattan Beach. Anna will make her own and walk along it’s bottom. All the most important scenes of the novel happen at sea, in the sea or at the seaside. In the poignant and incredibly symbolic scene in which Anna takes her sister for the first time to the beach, she starts babbling incessantly: "seaseeseaseesea”. Her words will come back in the least expected moments.
Although it is to some extent a family story, living in the comfort of your home is much more important to the environment in which heroes work. New York in the 1930s and 1940s is a difficult place, because it is a crisis, and war, and changes, but also intense and offering many possibilities. All it takes is a bit of resourcefulness to get somewhere. Anna's father, Eddie, once made a lot of money. Then he lost them, but nothing prevents him from earning again, he only needs to get to know the right people. Dexter Styles, a gangster, marries a rich family, entering a world that does not want him. He doesn’t care - he does his own job, efficiently managing numerous clubs, gambling caves and other mysterious ventures. The most interesting is, of course, the situation of Anna, who first works among other women, but wanting to become a diver, enters the male domain. She is not welcomed there, and like Dexter Styles, she does not care. Her struggle to win her dream job illustrates the rapidly changing situation of women in America in the 1930s and 1940s. At first nobody treats her seriously, not believing that she will manage in ninety kilo overalls. Her persistence, begins to bear respect.
Excerpts about diving and how primitive and difficult to use equipment were available to divers belong to the most interesting in the novel. Immersed in the confined waters of the bay, divers have only two lines at their disposal - one connects them with the boat, the other is used to communicate with the partner who belches them from the surface. Communication with a rope is not easy, it is not understandable. You need to be vigilant, have intuition, observe bubbles on the surface of the water. Perhaps this is how the lives of the heroes, and even our readers, look like. The author does not reveal everything, you have to watch the bubbles carefully - the traces of events. We are wandering under water, with the world connecting us with thin threads and believing that someone is watching and at the critical moment will reach out a helping hand.
When reading, you also need to be vigilant. Seemingly irrelevant details appear suddenly, usually in the relations of other heroes - not those they concern. It's easy to miss them. It is only when they appear again, but this time presented by someone else, that we begin to understand that they are important. Everyone hides secrets. The meetings are not mentioned, the truth about themselves is not revealed, and information about the family is not disclosed. Appearances are mistaken, and the author likes to lead the reader astray. It is better not to succumb to temptation and not judge, because hardly anyone will appear as it may seem to us at first. The most mysterious scenes resonate with the most mysterious ones - opening a novel walks on the beach, taking the sister to the sea, and some diving. They come back to us while reading, and although to fully understand them, we would probably need to read the novel once again, it is difficult to throw them out from under the eyelids.
”Manhattan Beach” is not a novel without flaws. Historical details are overwhelming and weary. The jumps between the heroes and places can get tired. However, Egan, writes in such a beautiful language that it's hard not to succumb to the charm of her shapely phrases. This is a seemingly very traditional novel - historical, realistic, extensive. Not coincidentally, is bearing the motto of Moby Dick. Under the guise of a historical novel, there is an ambiguous, mysterious story about starting again and returns, about the relationships between parents and children, about struggles and relationships that are not what they seem. And also about New York at the time of change, dangerous, but full of possibilities, inconceivable and fascinating.