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Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan I should read more literature, I always say. It will broaden my horizons and get me out of a sci-fi rut, I say. I
don't really like NYC but I should read the city bookclub selection for 2018 to try to be more of a team player.
Well - overall there's a reason why I don't gravitate to New York Times Bestsellers - they always feel a little
manufactured, a little engineered, and a little designed to extract poignant moments at regular intervals, so you
feel like you're getting your time investments worth.
All that said - there is plenty to enjoy in this work, both from a historical and 'slice of life' NYC perspective, from
a strong-female-character perspective, and from a family perspective. I found the dynamic between father and daughter to be
interesting, complex and on the whole fulfilling, if still problematic in places. Some character motivations were stretched
to the limit of plausibility, and some unlikely scenarios felt just a little too contrived to be comfortably believed. However, there's
more to enjoy here than in many lesser works, so if you want a family drama set in the WWII time period, which seems to be
pretty well researched, and populated with a handful of interesting characters you could do worse.
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