Kyle’s Reviews > Manhattan Beach > Status Update

It is starting to wear me out, the constant flow of novels that all seem to rehash a nostalgic mash of the Second World War and revered role American troops played. The homefront isn’t much more interesting either. Racial stereotypes abound, as if all one needed to know about someone was their heritage of drunkenness, greed or violence that put others in their place while glorifying one’s own ancestral adversity.

A few too many chapters featuring almost-endings: the one where Anna find out what happened to her long lost dad, the one where Dexter almost beats the odd mixed with Eddie’s gangland exit, and then Anna’s trouble that were almost over before her sister’s intervention. So much potential so near the end, it is any wonder if the resolution won’t be a family reunion and one absent father swapped out for another.

Another awarded novel that takes the nonlinear timeline approach to storytelling, after several strictly chronological chapters at the beginning to lure me into a false sense of security. Most of the flashback serve the purpose of filling in Eddie’s backstory, or rather the gap he left for Anna and his family when he was shipped out. Must agree with Agnes that the rest was better off without, but here we are again!

Anna’s story takes an expected turn allowing two clichés as she strives to be a diver only to encounter Benny Goodman-era sexism. And then, in a moment of empowered achievement, she hooks up with Dexter and may very well be on her way to becoming his moll if only for their shared past. Turns out her father didn’t just disappear, Dexter might have had a hand to get him Shanghaied in San Francisco five years back.

While the plot doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, at least it is not getting anywhere faster than the first few chapters, focused on Anna all grown up and taking charge while her mother remains in the same place with her near-motionless daughter, Lydia. Meanwhile, Dexter only just endures the disappointments that wealth has brought upon his family and probably he is better off with a self-willed daughter like Anna.

The girl’s got moxie, as those roaring ‘20s-types used to say, and kind of sad not getting to know her union-flunky dad a bit better before he is long gone by Part Two. As much as I am getting into this tale, starting to sense that every corner of New York, in any era, was really just a pissing contest between marginalized communities more upset with others on the margins than with those elites putting them down.