Jennifer Egan is the author of six previous books of fiction: Manhattan Beach, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Keep; the story collection Emerald City; Look at Me, a National Book Award Finalist; and The Invisible Circus. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Granta, McSweeney's, and The New York Times Magazine. Her website is JenniferEgan.com.
"A novel that deserves to join the canon of New York stories."
--Amor Towles, New York Times Book Review "Manhattan Beach is
ambitiously and deliciously plot-driven."
--NPR's Fresh Air "...dares to satisfy us in a way that stories of
an earlier age used to."
--Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Manhattan Beach is an enthralling work of historical fiction that
weaves together beautiful imagery, an immersive story, and
compelling characters into a single story of family secrets and
unconditional love."
--My San Antonio "It's an astutely executed piece of historical
literature that's also unafraid to indulge in the thrills of its
rich plot."
--Minneapolis City Pages "Jennifer Egan does everything right as a
novelist, with vivid characters and surprising enough plot
twists... but she pushes all her work some notches higher with her
evocation of what it feels like to be the first woman to experience
the previously forbidden world of undersea divers."
--Buffalo News "Manhattan Beach" is an old-fashioned page-turner
that more than delivers on the foreboding promise of its 'Treasure
Island'-like opening set piece. The book is a Whitmanesque mosaic
that truly does 'embrace multitudes.'"
--Brooklyn Daily Eagle
"Manhattan Beach is... beautifully written throughout... But for an
author who won literature's highest accolade for a book based on
its uniqueness, it's perhaps even more impressive that she can also
write a fantastic novel that is, at least on the surface, as
classic as they come."
--GQ "Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan makes her maiden deep
dive into historical fiction with the vivid Manhattan Beach."
--Vanity Fair "[Egan's] prose moves in a way that feels effortless,
a sure sign that it's anything but. . . . It's the best sort of
historical fiction, transporting the reader to another place
without ever loosing bonds of the familiar. Egan's characters are
vivid, their authenticity a kind of wonder, their losses and joys
achingly true. . . . Egan sets the knot, and we are all in
thrall."
--O, The Oprah Magazine "Highly atmospheric... immediate...
expertly written"
--Goop
"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
"An unusually well written, well researched, emotionally satisfying
page-turner . . . Manhattan Beach is the kind of book you can
immerse yourself in happily."
--Heller McAlpin, San Francisco Chronicle "Jennifer Egan . . .
continues a string of wildly various and imaginative novels with
Manhattan Beach... The thrill of her novels is in the dive to
places unknown."
--Alexandra Wolfe, Wall Street Journal "Rich, brilliant, capacious
. . . Egan has every gift a writer can possess . . . . Moving,
mournful, and often profound."
--USA Today
"Egan's most remarkable accomplishment yet. . . . At once a
suspenseful novel of noir intrigue, a gorgeously wrought and richly
allusive literary tapestry, and a transporting work of lyrical
beauty and emotional heft, Manhattan Beach is a magnificent
achievement."
--Priscilla Gilman, The Boston Globe "[Egan has a] talent for
dazzling, specific descriptions that animate each chapter, and
dialogue that rings true to her memorable characters and their
era."
--Eileen Weiner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "What Jennifer Egan gives
us in Manhattan Beach . . . is good, old-fashioned writing--or
old-fashioned good writing, which is something else again."
--Ellen Akins, Minneapolis Star-Tribune "A story of Dickensian
ambition that benefits mightily from [Egan's] meticulous attention
to detail and her rich, evocative language."
--St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"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 "Ambitious, compassionate, engrossing."
--Francine Prose, The New York Review of Books "Egan's first foray
into historical fiction makes you forget you're reading historical
fiction at all."
--Elle "Egan's prose is transparent and elegant. . . .But the chief
joy of reading Manhattan Beach lies in diving under the surface
pleasures of the plot (which are plentiful -- it's immersive and
compelling), and sinking slowly to its dark and unknowable depths.
There are deep truths there."
-- Vox
"Genuinely affecting and handsomely constructed. It moves for all
the right reasons."
--The Independent UK "A work of remarkable cinematic scope. . . .
This is a novel that will pull you in and under and carry you away
on its rip tides. . . . Its resonances continue to wash over the
reader long after the novel ends."
--The Guardian UK "Intricately patterned and visionary . . .
.Manhattan Beach . . . plunges into the past to discover what lies
beneath the surface of our own world."
--The Atlantic "Reading Manhattan Beach feels restorative . . .
deeply imagined . . . [and] very, very welcome."
--Slate
"The novel's crooked politicians, organized-crime bosses, and shady
cops make it read like a fast-paced, hard-boiled drama."
--Marie Claire "Exquisitely wrought."
--Entertainment Weekly "This truly fine novel, so rich in period
and emotional atmosphere and so cunningly plotted, is a joy -- one
of the standouts of the year."
--Newsday "A richly imagined portrait of a bygone era."
--Houston Chronicle
"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)
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