MANHATTAN BEACH by Pulitzer Winning Author Jennifer Egan Misses the Boat Big Time

MANHATTAN BEACH is a novel whose heroine, Anna, is a young woman living in NY during WWII with the audacity & drive to become the sole female trained as a scuba diver.  Anna is an admirable as a young girl for the care she bestows her severely disabled sister.  Her sense of character & self-assuredness serve to guide her.  She's an impressive maverick with a healthy disregard for norms imposed by society & for authority.   Jennifer Egan (b Amer 1962) received the Pulitzer Prize for A VISIT from the GOON SQUAD in part for her innovative storytelling that disregards timelines or conventions to great effect.  LOOK at Me was a Finalist for the Nat'l Book Award with penetrating character studies.  In MANHATTAN BEACH, Egan's format is conventional storytelling and muddled cardboard character stereotypes.  Unfortunately, Egan's timepiece novel ventures to sea during WWII, waddles through puritanical double standards and gets mixed up in the underworld dealings of criminal hierarchies.  Anna is admirable & ahead of her time.  It's the plotting of the story that is tedious.  Anna is the central character tethered to an odd triangle involving her father Eddie & gangster Dexter Styles. Eddie bails on the family after becoming meshed in a crime syndicate. He  reported to mob boss Dexter.  Anna first encounters Dexter as a young girl at his home along the shores of Manhattan Beach by her father during a brief business dealing.  The novel jumps years at a time (which is not a crime).  Anna has an adulterous affair with Dexter after her father abandons the family & Anna runs into him at one of his nightclubs.  Dexter leaves Anna in a family way.  This relentless scenario is disastrous for unmarried women of the era and proves fatal for him.  {Buzz kill} Dexter is riddled by bullets from a hit most likely ordered by his wealthy upper crust father-in-law who lets others do his dirty work.  I did relish the training Anna received as a scuba diver and the sexism she battled.  Eddy's tale of survival after his war ship is torpedoed is also absorbing.  Issues of racial & ethnic prejudice & woman's oppression drift in and out but without an anchor.  This WWII epic on land & at sea felt adrift and misses the target of a compelling story.  The misfired trajectories were weighed down upon the shore.  MANHATTAN BEACH is a major bore; a disappointing read from a gifted writer.