Manhattan Beach feels like Jennifer Egan wrote three (maybe even four) short stories and then decided they could possibly be connected so she loosely strung them together and called them a novel. The A plot is Anna, a young woman who works in the Navy yard in New York during WW2 who finds her calling as a diver. She has an overprotective mother, a crippled sister and an absent father. The B plot is about a gangster named Dexter Styles who becomes a bit infatuated with […]
The Sea, The Sea
As a writing instructor, the problem with starting a book right after Thanksgiving is that there are so many other texts competing for your attention—revised drafts of analytical essays, annotated bibliographies, and thanks to my class for new writing center tutors, lots of wonderful reflections and projects. As a result, though I was sucked into the story of Jennifer Egan’s new novel right from page one, it took me awhile to get through it. I actually used it as motivation—read and respond to five essays […]