![]() ![]() As he and Anna chat about his profitable involvement in the war effort-“keeping the brass amused and easing the pain of rationing”-Lydia’s eyes blink open, and she begins to babble. It’s 1942, and in the distance a passenger ship sails by, presumably transporting troops to Europe.ĭexter owns several popular clubs and illegal casinos around New York City. Dexter’s palatial house abuts a private beach, and he and Anna carry Lydia, swaddled in an imported blanket from his linen closet and propped up in a specially designed chair, to the edge of the water. Lydia, who cannot walk or feed herself, and who rarely leaves her family’s cramped apartment, has never seen the ocean, and Anna allows herself to hope that the experience might arrest her sister’s decline and jolt her out of her growing detachment from the loving domestic life around her. A third of the way through Jennifer Egan’s new novel, Manhattan Beach, a young woman named Anna Kerrigan enlists Dexter Styles, a charismatic nightclub owner and racketeer, to drive her and her severely disabled sister, Lydia, to the seashore at the edge of Brooklyn. ![]()
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