Feminism – Finding My Wings

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan (Scribner) 2017
In 40 words or less: Eddie Kerrigan could do no wrong in his daughter Anna’s eyes. After he disappears, she helps support her family during WWII at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, pushing the limits of “women’s work.” Anna never stops wondering what happened to her father.
Genre: Literary fiction
Locale: New York
Time: 1930’s and 40’s
Jennifer Egan has a new twist on the Rosie the Riveter story, set in a working-class neighborhood in New York. From page one, Anna is smart and strong-willed, equally devoted to her family and her personal success.

The Depression has seen a reversal in the Kerrigan family fortunes. While Eddie loves his wife and both daughters, his wife Agnes has to devote almost all her attention to Lydia, disabled from birth and homebound. Agnes left a dancing career to raise her family, only retaining her exquisite costuming skills to help in its support. In Anna, Eddie sees a buddy, ready to accompany him on his rounds, and keep his secrets when needed. Financial pressures and the stresses of living in close quarters draw Eddie away from home, often with little explanation. One day he just doesn’t return.

Almost a decade later Anna secures a technical job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, ensuring that precision parts meet specifications. Her off-hours are focused on her mother and her sister, whose physical needs are becoming more taxing. Anna makes the acquaintance of another worker who draws her into a life of nightclubs and men who are living on the edges of legality. Anna meets the nightclub owner, a man she met as a child on a visit with her father and gives him a false name, one of several secrets in her new life.

The tedium and low pay of the jobs reserved for women send Anna in search of alternatives at the Navy Yard. The most difficult position is that of a diver, working on the hulls of ships and performing repairs in total darkness underwater wearing hundreds of pounds of equipment. Against many odds, Anna is given a chance to compete for a spot.

Jennifer Egan has the knack for storytelling and enriching it with the little details that take a novel to the next level. For lovers of New York, there is the flavor of New York life, it’s neighborhoods and social fabric. If the role of women in the war effort is your thing, it’s there in spades. And then there is organized crime, the black market, and its prominent place in the entertainment business of the era. If told on its own, the family story of the Kerrigans would be compelling. Egan doesn’t play it for pathos, rather as cards the family has been dealt. This novel has all the attributes that the individual reader or book club seeks out – conflict, fully developed characters, and a setting that supports the plot in all its details. Manhattan Beach is consistent with the high-level writing people expect from Jennifer Egan.

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Lillian Boxfish Takes A Walk by Kathleen Rooney (St. Martin’s Press, 2017)
In 40 words or less: Lillian was a woman before her time. On New Year’s Eve, at 85 years old, she sets out to walk the important landmarks of her life in New York and revisit decisions, good and bad.
Genre: Fiction
Locale: Primarily NYC
Time: New Year’s Eve 1984 and flashbacks
This book was pure pleasure. Lillian is based on a woman copywriter for Macy’s beginning in the 1930s. Kathleen Rooney captures both the bon vivant and the troubles that make a story worth reading. As a dedicated walker and child of New York, I was with Lillian every step of the way.

New York City has long been the destination for writers, actors and other aspirants with dreams beyond Main Street at home. Kathleen Rooney creates in Lillian Boxfish a woman pushing the envelope of the 20th century. Conveniently, Lillian is born in 1900 and comes of age with the new freedoms of the 1920s. This affords her the opportunity to seek a career in New York after graduating Goucher College, of course, living in a women’s residence, suitable for unaccompanied young ladies of the era. She eventually secures a position as an assistant copywriter for R.H. Macy, writing copy for the clever ads popular until widespread television advertising changed the field.

Lillian loves New York as much as she loves her independence. As a career woman of that era, her evenings and weekends were devoted to enjoying all the city had to offer and her growing expertise as a poet. Her colleagues were her core friends and occasional frenemy. While always very social, Lillian was disinclined to marry, move to the suburbs or give up her career.

All these stories are recounted in the course of New Year’s Eve, 1984, as Lillian walks across Manhattan, visiting many of the places that have defined her life. Although setting out alone, she isn’t particularly lonely, confidently stopping in fashionable restaurants for a cocktail and continuing on. At 85, she is still fit and interested in engaging with the city and all it offers, including bodega owners and young photographers she happens to befriend.

Lillian’s life has its share of missteps along with the successes. She marries and has a child late in life for someone of that era while continuing to work. Changing societal attitudes run throughout, and her beloved career at Macy’s eventually comes to an end. As a trailblazing woman in advertising, she is held as an icon and then abandoned as the feminist movement begins to take hold.

Rooney’s novel is a welcome change of pace. Adding to the attraction of Lillian’s character is the knowledge that she is inspired by the real life of Margaret Fishback, who did hold an assistant copywriter’s position with Macy’s and had her poetry published. While the story is pure fiction, I’d certainly like to be Lillian when I grow up!

Category: Feminism

Escape to ‘Manhattan Beach’

Wandering NYC and life with Lillian Boxfish

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