LITERARY FICTION
MANHATTAN BEACH by Jennifer Egan (Corsair £16.99)
IN A NOTE accompanying Manhattan Beach, Egan explains her wish to write a ‘heroine-driven adventure story’ set at a time when women had little freedom to steer their own lives.
She has succeeded magnificently, marrying subterranean currents of illicit female desire with the shadowy underworld of Depression-era mobsters and — in a bold but inspired stroke — the submarine activities of deep-sea divers during World War II.
Central to this affecting noir is Anna Kerrigan, whom we first encounter in the company of her father, Eddie, as they meet gangster Dexter Styles. A handful of years later, Eddie has vanished and, with the outbreak of hostilities, Anna finds herself working in Brooklyn Naval Yard to support her mother and severely disabled sister.
Egan isn’t shy about sharing her research and a lesser book might have been capsized by its weight; here, the detail serves only to deepen and enrich. Mystery novels, thinks Anna, are unsatisfying in part because they take place ‘in a single realm’ only. The genius of this book is that Egan successfully plumbs so many.
MRS OSMOND by John Banville (Penguin £14.99)
IN 2004, both David Lodge and Colm Toibin published novels based on the life of Henry James. Now he has inspired another leading light, the Booker prize-winning Banville, although this time it isn’t ‘The Master’ himself who is the star, but one of his most enduring creations: Isabel Archer, heroine of The Portrait Of A Lady.
Mrs Osmond picks up where James’s 1880 novel left off, with Isabel’s decision to return from London to Rome and her unfaithful husband, whom she knows married her merely for her great wealth. The literal and metaphorical journey that ensues is full of satisfying set pieces and encounters, and Banville has a rich line in brilliant — and brilliantly Jamesian — turns of phrase.
A familiarity with the source is strongly recommended, but if Mrs Osmond never quite dispels the air of an exercise, it is executed with such style and surefootedness that one can hardly object.
RECONCILIATION by Guy Ware (Salt £8.99)
TOWARDS the end of Reconciliation, a character reflects on Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous ‘unknown unknowns’. It’s a significant moment as absent, slippery or suspect ‘facts’ are central to this unapologetically knotty novel, so much so that even the identity of the character doing the reflecting is uncertain.
We begin in 2003, on the eve of the Iraq War. Cambridge archivist Holly Stanton has recently taken possession of the transcript of a diary written by her grandfather, a spy daringly smuggled out of Norway after the country was invaded in 1940. As Holly’s husband observes, it’s a story ripe for fictionalisation and the narrative layers soon duly mount up.
The intelligence of Ware’s writing is such that he anticipates virtually every objection the reader might have and shifts the ground under our feet accordingly. That certainly makes for a bracing read and Ware’s ambition is as admirable as his themes are important.
But, ultimately, the feeling is of a yarn that deconstructs itself rather too frequently and rather too well.