The Kerrigan family lives in working-class Brooklyn, on the
sixth floor of a typical tenement building: cramped, no lifts, all the
neighbours known to one another. We know by the end of the first chapter that
they are not quite the everyday family; Anna is the elder of 2 daughters, and
the constant companion of her father Eddie, who takes her with him on visits to
deliver ‘notes and packages’ to his Union colleagues. The younger daughter,
Liddy, is profoundly disabled, cared for at home with boundless love and
attention by Anna and her mother –but, it soon appears, an object of guilt and
rejection by Eddie, who cannot accept her condition and despite loving his wife
and being a ‘good provider’, spends little time at home.
When Anna goes with her father for a mysterious visit (in
reality a recruitment test) to Ed Styles, shady nightclub owner and devoted
family man, two elements of the story are established: Eddie is a bagman for
the Syndicate, and Anna has a passion for the nearby beach which continues into
her adulthood.
The story quite abruptly jumps forward about 10 years, to
rejoin adult Anna and her adult companions, all women recruited to ‘war work’
in a Naval assembly factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Anna is quickly seen to
be a rebel who defies the rule about eating lunch in the building with the
boring ‘marrieds’, and spends her lunch breaks exploring the docks and
befriending the wild and beautiful Nell.
Eddie has disappeared
years since, without any farewell or obvious reason, and is presumed dead. Anna
and her mother continue to care for Liddy with devotion but without hope.
Anna’s restless boredom and love of the sea crystallise when
she sees Navy divers training on the docks, and, helped by the war-related
scarcity of male recruits, she manages to get a trial with the divers. We
realise the entrenched misogyny of the time through her excruciating
humiliation by the officer in charge, and feel her exhaustion and inner
toughness as she prevails to become an accomplished diver.
Meanwhile, Anna is introduced to nightclub life by Nell, and
meets Ed Styles – she recognises him while he of course does not recognise her
as the child of the beach, and she gives him a false name.
The wild and illicit
affair that ensues consumes both of them, and is one of the best-written
descriptions of sexual abandon that I have read. The story becomes more intense
and involving as it moves through the diving dramas, the death of Liddy, the
mother’s search for new meaning away from New York and Anna’s increased freedom
and independence.
The fate of Ed Styles, the consequences of the affair, and
sudden news about Eddie, keep the story fascinating, a real page-turner that
continually reminds us of the historical setting of the war, the social
environment, and mainly, for me, believable characters whose lives I cared
about.
The only parts that I considered over-written and tedious,
and tempted me to skip pages, were a couple of the diving sequences – enough
already! Overall, I loved the book, with its depiction of the period and the
constant presence of the ocean and the centrality of the docks and shipping to the growth of New York.
Review by Helen
