Jennifer Egan, whose 2011 novel “A Visit from the Goon Squad” took home a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, has a new book out called “Manhattan Beach,” and she’ll be reading from it tonight at Johns Hopkins University.
Once heralded as a “refreshable unclassifiable novelist” in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Egan achieved literary stardom through her historically and travel-inspired works of metafiction, and has also made a name for herself as an award-winning journalist covering painful subjects, such as self-mutilation, closeted gay teens and Marines, and bipolar disorder in children.
But The Guardian noted last year that her latest novel, “Manhattan Beach,” is actually surprisingly conventional in its structure and chosen protagonist, and employs classic Victorian themes reflecting on its mid-20th century setting. Tonight, Egan will be reading from her 400-page tale about a young woman making warships for the U.S. Navy, set in Egan’s home of Brooklyn during the Great Depression and World War II. Time Magazine ranked it one of the 10 best books of 2017, and highlighted the “verve, vulnerability, and a tough-as-nails glamour” of its heroine.
Egan will also be taking questions and signing books after the reading at Mudd Hall on Hopkins’ Homewood campus. The Ivy Bookshop will be selling copies, in case you aren’t bringing your own.
6-8 p.m., Mudd Hall, Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St., more info here, free.
