Blog interpreted by Sharon from Sarah's notes
A few of our members (Sharon, Jane and Meredith) went to the Sydney Writers' Festival and heard Jennifer Egan and Min Jin Lee ( Pachinko) speak about writing historical novels.
The depth of their research is much appreciated and their hard work validated.
Jennifer Egan is kind of a role model being only 55 and successful. The character of Brianne was well liked and Anna is an admirable heroine. Although some of her endeavours appear far fetched, we didn't mind it because of the clean writing. The through lines we felt were of the sea, the underworlds, feminism and strong women.
We rated the novel 8/10 and Melissa described is as "excellent, praiseworthy, intelligent, clean, so well written and well researched". She found quite a few metaphors she liked : examples on pages 307, 310, 365 and 369.
Comments from Lee :
I finished Manhattan Beach a few nights ago and agree with a few comments that it was a most enjoyable read. Another coming of age story but with so many different unexpected twists to the story, that also included many other stories of the various characters. Apart from Anna’s story, which did I enjoy most? Maybe the harrowing story of Eddie on the merchant navy ship and the wreck, but would have liked to have known more about how he survived although a little was revealed later. Brianne turned out to be quite a surprise and it was tragic to read that her pretend life had been a front for her sad destitution and then she took on the heroic stance to help Anna to move to California and raise her child. Anna herself is an amazing character and in reading the acknowledgements at the end to discover that there were actually hard hat women divers during the war was surprising. The surprises revealed in the narrative about women in war service and the prejudice they faced was so different from the usual women in war work in arms factories. Never would I have imagined hard hat divers! The character of Dexter Styles was so interesting, but I thought that there had to be more to the development of the relationship before the amazing one night stand, a scene worthy of Hemingway and “the earth moving”. I wasn’t quite sure why Dexter was killed, but he seemed to know of his impending demise but sadly didn’t have the Houdini like skills of Eddie to escape his death. And what role did his father in law have in Eddie’s execution?? Many sides to many characters. And the father in law must have somehow had links to Dexter Styles....
I did like “the happy ending”. Anna was going to be a wonderful mother after all the care and love she had given to Lydia. And the writing throughout was imaginative and the detailed descriptions, so that it was easy to imagine the grim world of the New York docks and the contrast of the tranquility of Manhattan Beach. While the Country Club world of New York society and their social prejudices was easy to visualise from the many movies, TV shows and books that we all have seen. And their ignorance of the fate that awaited their sons as they went off to war.
Our next meeting is on June 21st at Melissa's and our book choice is Extinctions by Josephine Wilson.
