アンドリュー・カーネギー成人向けフィクションおよびノンフィクション優秀賞
Manhattan Beach: A Novel
大恐慌期から第二次世界大戦下のブルックリンを舞台に、父の失踪を追うアナ・ケリガンが、海軍工廠で働きながら女性潜水士への道を切り開く歴史小説。港湾の闇社会、家族の沈黙、海への憧れが重なり、戦時下の都市に生きる人々の孤独と自由への希求を描く。
作品情報
暗い海の底へ潜ることは、アナにとって失われた父と自分自身を探す行為でもあった。
幼いころ父に連れられて訪れた海辺の屋敷。その記憶は、父の突然の失踪後もアナの中に沈みつづける。戦時下のニューヨークで海軍工廠に職を得た彼女は、重い潜水装備をまとって海底へ向かう仕事に魅せられ、父の行方を知るかもしれない男デクスター・スタイルズと再び出会う。個人史と都市史を重ねた、サスペンスと抒情を併せ持つ長編。
レビュー要約
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時代考証の厚みと水辺のイメージが、犯罪小説の緊張感と家族小説の感情を結びつけている。実験的な前作群より語りは直線的だが、人物の痛みと親密さを支える筆致が評価されている。
書籍情報
- 出版社
- Scribner
- 発売日
- 2017-10-03
- ページ数
- 448ページ
- 言語
- 英語
- サイズ
- 15.24 x 3.56 x 22.86 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781476716732
- ISBN-10
- 1476716730
- 価格
- 5580 JPY
- カテゴリ
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Historical
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad comes a sweeping historical novel set in the Depression-era and wartime New York, where a young woman’s courage transforms her life on the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Esquire , Vogue , The Washington Post , The Guardian , USA TODAY , and Time Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a Booklyn gangster who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men. ?Years later, America enters World War II and her father has disappeared. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished. “A magnificent achievement, at once a suspenseful noir intrigue and a transporting work of lyrical beauty and emotional heft” ( The Boston Globe ), “Egan’s first foray into historical fiction makes you forget you’re reading historical fiction at all” ( Elle ). Manhattan Beach takes us into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men in a dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.
Jennifer Egan is the author of six previous books of fiction: Manhattan Beach , winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; A Visit from the Goon Squad , which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Keep ; the story collection Emerald City ; Look at Me , a National Book Award Finalist; and The Invisible Circus . Her work has appeared in The New Yorker , Harper’s Magazine , Granta , McSweeney’s , and The New York Times Magazine . Her website is JenniferEgan.com.
レビュー
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magnificent
1930年代～40年代のニューヨーク・ブルックリン。恐慌と世界大戦下の暗く厳しい社会状況の中で、様々な人間模様が描かれる。Manhattan Beach とはブルックリンの南端にあるConey Islandの海岸で、マンハッタンの富裕層のリゾート地としてその名がついた。 Anna は12歳のとき、父親の Eddie に連れられて、そのマンハッタン・ビーチに建つ Dexter Styles の屋敷を訪れたかすかな記憶がある。Eddie の仕事は謎めいていて Dexter との関係も定かではない。父と娘はその頃までは心を通わせ合っていたが、ある日突然 Eddie は失踪。Anna には父親に捨てられたという想いと彼の行方不明の真相を知りたいという想いが常につきまとう。Anna には Lydia という美しいが重い障害を持った妹がいて、母親と共に彼女を慈しむ。大学を1年で去り、海軍工廠に勤めるようになった Anna は、やがて当時極めて困難な女性潜水士になりたいと強く願うようになり、差別や偏見や厳しい苛酷な状況を乗り切ってついに潜水士になる。 Dexter は表向きはナイトクラブのチェーンの経営者で、裏では禁酒時代の密造酒の売買をはじめ、暗黒世界のボスとして暗躍するイタリア系ギャング。大銀行家の娘と結婚し義父を通して表社会での活躍を目論む。 偶然 Dexter と再会した Anna は、彼が父親の失踪の真実を知っているのではと疑いつつ、彼と深い関係になっていく。Dexter が Anna の願いを聞き入れて、妹の Lydia に海を見せるために、ビーチへと連れ出す場面には心を打たれる。 一方消息を絶った Eddie は瀕死の状況を脱出し、海軍の商船に乗り込むことになって、やがて三等航海士として働くが、魚雷に会って船が沈没し････。 この物語は、Anna と Eddie と Dexter の三人を軸に、それぞれの運命を絡み合わせて、大戦下の状況とともに、ノワールとも、愛の行方とも、親子の情愛とも、幾通りにもとれる複雑な構成になっている。時代も現実と回想が交錯する。彼らをとりまく様々な人物たちも魅力的に丁寧に書き込まれ、当時のアメリカ社会の様相も歴史的に明らかにされていて、壮大なミステリーとなっている。硬質な文章は時に抒情にあふれて美しい。 Eddie と Dexter, Anna と Dexter のそれぞれの関わり合いが、終章で Eddie と Anna 父娘の間でどのように捉えられたのかが全く触れられず疑問のまま、深い余韻を投げかけている。
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Characters living in different worlds collide in the busy war-time America.
Physical worlds of underwater welders, gangsters during prohibition, and a quadriplegic, are vividly described. Their lives intersect in the war-time America, giving historical perspectives.
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Historically interesting read
Based around the story of a family starting around the end of the depression and running into the end of WW2 the story runs through the life of one main character. It’s a well crafted story with some interesting twists and turns and at times different sub plots. The writing style is engaging and the author has a great descriptive skill. A worthy read.
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WWII FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE POND
A BEAUTIFUL BOOK, FULL OF SURPRISES, DIFFICULT TIMES AND LOVE. GIRL POWER AS OUR PROTAGANIST GOES AGAINST ALL ODDS TO FULFIL HER IDEALS AND GET TO THE BOTTOM OF A QUESTION SHE ASKS HERSELF CONTINUOUSLY.
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Améliorer votre anglais
Se plonger dans le monde nouveau à une période trouble de son histoire, une description d'un milieu mafieux dans les années de la prohibition, à travers les yeux d'une enfant!
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Superb Historical Fiction
This a damn fine book. The protagonist couldn’t have been better chosen: a working-class girl, freakishly unlucky but stalwart, living in Depression-era New York City. The names of the neighborhoods appear on signs with the flickering, colored lights of gangsterism and industrialism that illuminated Gotham during the Roosevelt years. Anyone who is decently read has heard those names and will recognize the connotations. Most of us with an interest in history will know something about that setting, about that time. The close-together mentions of Oriental Boulevard and the Brighton Beach trolley has us imagining the group pictures of our Great Uncle Sal and his sailor buddies, the ones lost at sea in a diesel submarine, that used to hang on the wall at Grandma’s house. As a source of entertainment, ‘Manhattan Beach’ resembles production of a family dinner in the days when dinner spent an hour in the oven before the preparation appeared to commence. The first 100 pages are all about character, setting and backstory. Only when that is done do the items that make up the narrative arc get pulled out of the icebox, two or three at a time. That’s when our protagonist, Anna, is grown and she engages powerfully, far more than was typical for women of the era, with two of the scariest parts of New York’s underbelly, never seeming to lose her self-control or her plan. Her relationships with all of the men around her are, initially, defined by the rules of the era. Women were dependent beings. They were daughters, sisters, wives and, sometimes, worker bees, but almost never anything more. Anna was the one who refused to be held back any more than necessary. She was Lois Lane in a deep-sea diving suit. Some people admired her, but just as many were thinking that any woman who worked a job that didn’t involve teaching children or sewing was stealing paychecks from a man. Ms. Egan’s earlier works are truly superb. And this book is excellent. It was dutifully researched and detailed. It was written in a compelling prose, parts of which could have come from a cookbook that included a recipe for Baked Alaska. However, it is missing an ingredient present in her earlier work: a soul. This book lacks meaning any deeper than the pancake makeup worn by the performers playing the seaside gin mills. It is a great story masterfully researched and told. It is superb historical fiction. But it is not the literary fiction Ms. Egan has led us to expect and it travels across ground that perhaps too many writers have already traveled.
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Fantastic book
Was reluctant to buy this book at first (read "Look at me" from the same author and wasn't that enthusiastic about it). But curiosity killed the cat and in this case it was a very happy ending because the book turned out to be absolutely fantastic. The story is thrilling in more than one aspect and the protagonists are very real. Plus it's written well. Actually I rationed my reading because I didn't want to end the book too soon.