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This title in other formats:Brookland: A Novelby Emily Barton
Awards
Los Angeles Times Book Review Favorite Book of the Year Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Since her girlhood, Prudence Winship has gazed across the tidal straits from her home in Brooklyn to the city of Manhattan and yearned to bridge the distance. Now, established as the owner of the enormously successful gin distillery she inherited from her father, she can begin to realize her dream. Set in eighteenth-century Brooklyn, this is the story of a determined and intelligent woman who is consumed by a vision of a bridge: a gargantuan construction of timber and masonry she devises to cross the East River in a single, magnificent span. With the help of the local surveyor, Benjamin Horsfield, and her sisters — the high-spirited, obstreperous Tem, who works with her in the distillery, and the silent, uncanny Pearl — she fires the imaginations of the people of Brooklyn and New York by promising them a bridge that will meet their most pressing practical needs while being one of the most ambitious public works ever attempted. Prue's own life and the life of the bridge become inextricably bound together as the costs of the bridge, both financial and human, rise beyond her direst expectations. Brookland confirms Emily Barton's reputation as one of the finest writers of her generation, whose work is "blessedly post-ironic, engaging and heartfelt" (Thomas Pynchon). Review:"A poignant tale of sisters who run a gin distillery in late 18th-century Brooklyn frames Barton's stalwart, evocative second novel, centering on early attempts at building a bridge across the East River to Manhattan. The Winship family — Matty, Roxana and their three daughters, Prue, Pearl and Tem — establish a distillery on the eastern bank of the East River in colonial days, weathering Revolutionary loyalties and brutish conditions. Practical oldest daughter Prue is trained in the working of the distillery and proves the prefeminist visionary, keeping an eye toward building a kind of springboard between Manhattan and Brookland, as the cluster of communities on that side of the river are called. Barton's richly detailed narrative assumes the form of letters Prue writes to her grown married daughter, Recompense, who is expecting her first child, and asks about the history of the failed 'bridgeworks' in order to fill in troubling gaps about the family. Indeed, once Prue takes over the distillery after her father's death and marries, the building of the bridge becomes an ide fixe, to which she sacrifices the happiness of sister Pearl and the reputation of her husband. Following The Testament of Yves Gundron, Barton fashions an enchanting saga for her sophomore effort; it is a major New York book of the season." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"[Prue] is a thorny, struggling soul. Together with the book's profound treatment of the spiritual ills born of the Enlightenment, this wonderful character is Barton’s main gift to us." Joan Acocella, the New Yorker Review:"Marvelous...So much modern fiction thinks small, feels small. Emily Barton will never be accused of either....Brookland turns out to be a story not just of risk, daring and ambition, but of the courage to fail — and the courage to live on after failing." Christopher Corbett, the New York Times Book Review Review:"Ms. Barton's prose voice is as good and supple as anything being written in America today. But in its 'period' tone (if that's the word), it reaffirms the unswerving adage of the novel reader: Describe a world well enough and I am its member. This is the voice of a great novelist." David Thomson, the New York Observer Review:"In Brookland, Emily Barton has taken an elegant way with questions of thought-provoking substance and has made a very fine and satisfying novel. And, if there is heartbreak at its end, those hearts are broken over things that mattered then — and still." Los Angeles Times Review:"[A] work of such grandeur that it evokes Tolstoy's genius for scope and story." San Diego Union-Tribune Review:"No historical novel in recent memory has amassed such an imposing wealth of rich period detail, and few novels of any genre extend an increasingly absorbing story to such a powerful, sorrowful conclusion. A brilliant book that should be a strong Pulitzer Prize contender." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) Synopsis:Set in eighteenth-century Brooklyn, this is the story of a determined and intelligent woman who is consumed by a vision of a bridge she devises to cross the East River in a single, magnificent span. About the AuthorEmily Barton's fiction has appeared in Story, American Short Fiction, and Conjunctions. Her first novel, The Testament of Yves Gundron, called "blessedly post-ironic, engaging, and heartfelt" by Thomas Pynchon, won the Bard Fiction Prize and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is the recipient of a 2006 artist's grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2006 fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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