Manhattan Beach

Jennifer Egan Corsair €24.10

Egan spent a decade ‘circling’ her latest novel. You wouldn’t know it to read it, except perhaps for the depth of its research. The Ziegfeld Follies, union politics, Wall Street, the criminal underworld of 1930s New York City, WWII maritime missions – all are brought to life with an irresistible intensity as heroine Anna Kerrigan comes of age and falls in with a suave gangster while becoming a deep-sea diver and finding out what happened to her missing father. Egan’s first foray into historical fiction, this is a more conventional book than her fans might expect but it’s as darkly immersive an experience as Anna’s dives.