Hometown Brew - Hardcover
From a writer whose work Robert Coover has described as "subtle, wise, intricate, innovative," a rich novel of family rivalries, corporate maneuvers, and sexual intrigue--set in a small Wisconsin beer town.
In the background: a small family-run brewery, Gutenbier, whose backward business practices have been miraculously transformed into an asset by the new vogue for microbreweries and designer beverages.
At the center: two women whose world is the brewery. Melissa Johnson is the heiress to Gutenbier, and Alice Reinhart works there. On her father's death, Melissa inherits the chairmanship everyone expected to go to her brother and finds herself resented by both workers and management. Alice, returning from New York and a bad marriage, takes up her job in the brewery only to discover that an indiscretion she committed at seventeen has surfaced and has made her the object of a series of seemingly innocent pranks that slowly reveal a darker intent. As these two women fight the forces arrayed against them and the novel moves toward its climax, the business, the politics--the life--of a town are compellingly portrayed.
In the background: a small family-run brewery, Gutenbier, whose backward business practices have been miraculously transformed into an asset by the new vogue for microbreweries and designer beverages.
At the center: two women whose world is the brewery. Melissa Johnson is the heiress to Gutenbier, and Alice Reinhart works there. On her father's death, Melissa inherits the chairmanship everyone expected to go to her brother and finds herself resented by both workers and management. Alice, returning from New York and a bad marriage, takes up her job in the brewery only to discover that an indiscretion she committed at seventeen has surfaced and has made her the object of a series of seemingly innocent pranks that slowly reveal a darker intent. As these two women fight the forces arrayed against them and the novel moves toward its climax, the business, the politics--the life--of a town are compellingly portrayed.
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From the Back Cover:
What the critics say about Ellen Akins
Home Movie
"The most adventurous and original first novel of recent months . . . Akins's bluntness is winning, and what she's saying goes straight to the heart of things . . . A kind of extended meditation on the dialectic of stripping and covering up . . . Home Movie has the richness and tortured complexity of the youthful sensibility at its best."
--Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker
"Home Movie attests to Ms. Akins's gift for manipulating language and ideas, her eagerness to look at the familiar through a prism of her invention and manufacture."
--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"This slow-motion encounter between youth and maturity, innocence and experience, is beautifully modulated fiction, a gracious and stately unfolding . . . Quite dazzling."
--Dan Cryer, Newsday
Little Woman
"Exquisitely written."
--Susan Dundin, New York Times Book Review
"Akins is a powerful and original writer."
--Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times
PUBLIC LIFE
"For a novel about superficiality, Ellen Akins's Public Life is startlingly--seductively--deep. Public Life is intense, idea-dense, and infused with a sense of tragic urgency. Once you've experienced the making of a president, Akins-style, you'll never watch a presidential campaign--or a president--quite the same way again."
--Chicago Sun-Times
About the Author:
Home Movie
"The most adventurous and original first novel of recent months . . . Akins's bluntness is winning, and what she's saying goes straight to the heart of things . . . A kind of extended meditation on the dialectic of stripping and covering up . . . Home Movie has the richness and tortured complexity of the youthful sensibility at its best."
--Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker
"Home Movie attests to Ms. Akins's gift for manipulating language and ideas, her eagerness to look at the familiar through a prism of her invention and manufacture."
--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"This slow-motion encounter between youth and maturity, innocence and experience, is beautifully modulated fiction, a gracious and stately unfolding . . . Quite dazzling."
--Dan Cryer, Newsday
Little Woman
"Exquisitely written."
--Susan Dundin, New York Times Book Review
"Akins is a powerful and original writer."
--Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times
PUBLIC LIFE
"For a novel about superficiality, Ellen Akins's Public Life is startlingly--seductively--deep. Public Life is intense, idea-dense, and infused with a sense of tragic urgency. Once you've experienced the making of a president, Akins-style, you'll never watch a presidential campaign--or a president--quite the same way again."
--Chicago Sun-Times
Ellen Akins is the author of three earlier novels, Public Life, Home Movie, and Little Woman, and a collection of short stories, World Like a Knife. She has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Whiting Writer's Award. She lives in Cornucopia, Wisconsin.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherKnopf
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 0679447954
- ISBN 13 9780679447955
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages227
- Rating
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Hometown Brew
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