skybridge

akaakp.bsky.social · @akaakp.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Swell 4/10

I found the idea of binding together the peninsula's biggest and saddest national news stories--The <i>Golden Venture</I>, 9/11, the crash of Flight 587--together intriguing, and telling it all from the perspective of non-natives (in the form of the Glassmans) is a far more interesting take than having a bunch of people from Rockaway talking about Rockaway. But I think the author's decision to incorporate characters from her 1987 novel threw the entire book off balance. Just about every member of the old lifeguard shack crew made an appearance--seemingly without having matured in even the most rudimentary of ways since we left them off. Their presence here is distracting--they pull at the edges of the story and drag the whole thing down. A tighter focus on the relationships among the Glassmans, the decisions/circumstances that brought them to Rockaway, and the story of the "murder house" would have made for a far better story. <br/><br/>The descriptions of post-9/11 Rockaway felt out of touch, too. The air in Belle Harbor was so thick with sadness during that first year or two, it was as though every member of the community was either being crushed under the burden of grief, or walking on eggshells around someone who was more directly suffering from it. None of the local characters felt real. Do lifeguards really still think of themselves as lifeguards ten years after they stop being lifeguards? Did teenagers really make 9/11 jokes just months after the attacks, while their friends' parents were waiting for the remains of loved ones to come home, piece by piece, if at all? So much of it just rang false to me. <br/><br/>Overall, I think Eisenstadt had the bones of a good story here, but failed to step back and edit it down to essentials.

#book

Published 2026-01-07 12:23 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere