Book manhattan beach review6/6/2023 ![]() The idea that Manhattan Beach is a radical departure for Egan – or, rather, a departure that is radical in being conservative – depends on not looking back very far. It’s within that structure of inevitability and obligation that reviewers call Manhattan Beach ‘surprising’. ![]() It also guaranteed that her next book, whatever it was, would be widely reviewed. ![]() The novel, which won a Pulitzer, secured Egan’s reputation as an astute analyst of the present, the recent past and even the near future – it ranges from 1979 to the 2020s. Each of its 13 chapters is different: one chapter is a footnoted celebrity profile written by a journalist in prison for sexually assaulting said celebrity another is a series of PowerPoint slides created by a 12-year-old about music (they’re about pauses in great rock’n’roll songs) and her family. Her previous and best-known book, A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010), was lauded for being formally inventive. M any reviewers of Jennifer Egan’s new novel Manhattan Beach have found the book ‘surprising’ for being straightforward and conventional. ![]()
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