Hometown Brew [Hardcover]

Ellen Akins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 20, 1999

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though the struggle between Wisconsin siblings Melissa and Frank Johnson for control of their family brewery should be at the center of this overflowing novel, a subplot about their employee Alice Reinhart, who posed at 17 for "pictures that made their way into a men's magazine," threatens from the first sentence to overwhelm the tale. Another subplot, involving the mixed legacy of the Johnsons' father (controlling even from beyond the grave), comes tantalizingly into view, but this novel is so overripe with ideas and relationships that the plot bogs down in complications. The narrative begins when Melissa's illegitimate son, Jesse, is 11 and Frank Sr. is dying after suffering a stroke at the home of one of Melissa's friends, having enjoyed a brief romance, or spasm of territorial imperative, with his son's fiancee. Although it sounds in summary like soap opera, the novel hums with complex questions about the sexual and professional initiations of Melissa and Alice, the brutal humiliation of Frank Jr. by his father and the ensuing sibling struggle for control of the brewery. Akins (Public Life) has more than one interesting tale to tell but seems to have been unable to decide which one should dominate. The result is a book with a lot of head on it: rich, murky and not quite easy to swallow.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Akins's first novel since the well-received Public Life (LJ 5/1/93) traces the fortunes of a small-town family of brewers. In the opening chapters, Melissa Johnson, the brewery owner's daughter, is an unwed mother in Colorado in unexplained circumstances. She returns home to Wisconsin and her father's acceptance. When her father dies, Melissa is named executor of the will, infuriating her brother. She makes an inept attempt to run the company but can't rein in her brother. Overlooking the obvious micro-brewery marketing niche, Frank pushes through development of a lite beer, with a sexist ad campaign that increases demand so much the company can't afford the higher production and payroll costs and is bought out by a large company. Symmetrical plot lines of Melissa's sexual involvement with the company lawyer and Frank's with an attractive brewery worker seem to be going somewhere, but the overly intellectualized narrative and inane business discussions drag the story down to the level of soap opera. A marginal purchase.?Reba Leiding, Renssalaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing (July 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517463504
• ISBN-13: 978-0517463505
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,214,492 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Home HomeBrew is captivating prose with a dash of mystery., August 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Hometown Brew (Hardcover)

I have been following Ellen Akins work for several years. For me, "Home Brew" was her most reachable work to date. In "Home Movie" and "Little Woman", Akins presented intense characters whose life issues were often personal and internal. In her collection of short stories, "World Like A Knife", these characters verged on disturbing, but with an ever present clarity and sense of drama. I have found that Akins artfully descriptive prose engage the reader, connecting you to the characters of the story. In "Home Brew", she has outdone herself. I was captivated by the two lead female characters, who portrayed a balance of strength and vulnerability which is so often a reality of human nature.

Akins books often seem to preceed current events - and she has again shown her uncanny ability in this regard. While I would not categorize her as an issue or feminist writer, she has frequently selected topics which are pertinent to our times, and perhaps give us pause for thought. But mostly, I read Ellen Akins books for the enjoyment of her beautifully created prose. In Home Brew - she has blended her literary style with zest, humor and a touch of suspense. I could not put this one down and read it cover to cover in one sitting!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A COMPELLING PORTRAIT OF SMALL TOWN LIFE, February 8, 2004

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hometown Brew (Hardcover)

As in two of her previous novels World Like A Knife and Home Movie gifted author Ellen Akins again examines a world of uncertainties inhabited by the bruised and fallible. Once more her characters suffer from an inability to communicate with one another, struggling to understand and comprehend behind self-imposed boundaries of silence.

Set in a small mid Wisconsin beer town Hometown Brew is a complex, sometimes fragmented, tale of family rivalry, corporate machinations, and sexual liaisons.

Offspring of a Germanic father and Spanish mother, Melissa and Frank Johnson have inherited the family brewery, Gutenbier. Melissa, a single mother of an 11-year-old son, was left the lion's share of stock.

Brother and sister are a study in contrasts. Less exotic in taste and temperament than her south European mother, Melissa had her mother's "misleading" look, while Frank "seemed to harbor the passion of their mother's nature...secret and banked, only scintillating now and then in the fierceness of its restraint." Rather than open conflicts, their disparate personalities result in cold war skirmishes around the brewery's conference table.

A new brewery employee, Alice Rinehart, "...at seventeen had posed for some pictures that made their way into a men's magazine." "A shy and serious girl," the posing made her feel "admired by a whole anonymous audience of men who wouldn't normally have noticed her, and this secret power thrilled her..."

Fleeing from a failed marriage, Alice is one of the lost. After she reports being sexually harassed by fellow employees, her home is vandalized, and she is the victim of a retaliatory bottle rape. This scene, mind-numbing in its horror, underscores the unflinching honesty with which Ms. Akins surveys brutality.

At times, Alice's plight tends to overpower the story of Melissa vs. Frank as they clash over a proposed ad campaign and disagree on possible company financing in their ongoing struggle for control of the brewery. While the two tales do eventually converge, herein lies an unwieldiness of story line as issues are raised and left unresolved. Did the brewery's working environment allow sexual harassment to take place? What happened to the men who raped Alice? Did Melissa's son ever find the father he sought?

Were it not for Ms. Akins's fluidly subtle probing of her character's thought processes and life's exigencies, Home Brew might begin to sound alarmingly like a hastily made for television movie.

Much of the author's strength is found in her delicately mined observations, such as a young boy's response to his grandfather's death: "...Jesse hadn't lived long enough to suspect that the best was already past, or to learn that mourning might open the way to all manner of human sadness too deep and abstract for its own occasion."

Ms. Akins's work has been called "A kind of extended meditation on the dialectic of stripping and covering up..." That is apt description of her latest offering. Rather like a car trip on which the drive is more enjoyable than the destination, Hometown Brew impresses with many remarkable scenes but leaves us wondering about where we've wound up. Nonetheless, one wouldn't want to have missed the journey for this novel, with all its contradictions and complexities, is impressive.

- Gail Cooke

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a rich, complex tale about sexual politics., June 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Hometown Brew (Hardcover)

this is a rich, complex story about sexual politics--between a brother and sister, between coworkers, between a father and his children. set in wisconsin, the book is about the fight for control of the family brewery between a brother and sister. the questions of sexual harrasment mirror the famous Stroh's Brewery case of a few years ago. the book starts slow but builds in drama and momentum, becoming, at the end, a real page-turner. absolutely recommended.