The Brotherhood of the Grape

Henry Molise, a fifty-year-old successful writer, returns to the family home to help with the latest drama; his elderly parents want to divorce. Henry’s tyrannical, bricklaying father, Nick, despite being weakened by age and alcoholism, can still strike fear into the hearts of his sons. His mother, ill and devoutly Catholic, still has the power both to comfort and confuse her children. Nick has been offered some well-paid work to build a smokehouse in the hills, and Henry, realising this might be the last chance they have to reconcile things, agrees to lend a hand. What he doesn’t appreciate is how much this journey is going to change his view of his father. The Brotherhood of the Grape is vintage Fante, brimming with love, death, violence and religion. Writing with great passion, Fante powerfully describes the damage that family can wreak upon us all.

Reviews of The Brotherhood of the Grape

* Fante's searing, effortless style eschewed the refinement of Fitzgerald, the hubris of Hemingway and the panoramic vistas of Dos Passos. Instead he marshalled the raw materials of his own life – poverty, sex, paternal hatred, Catholic guilt, misplaced pride, hard drinking, labour, fighting, overarching literary ambition and the internecine hatred within immigrant communities in pre-war America – rendering the pain and comedy with such heartbreaking simplicity as to brook no hint of the literary zeitgeist. Dazed & Confused * John Fante takes some beating … mean, moody, disturbing and intensely atmospheric. The Times * John Fante knew how to make words sing. When he was on form, he could write sentences that stopped time. Uncut * Bandini is a magnificent creation, and his rediscovery is not before time. Times Literary Supplement * Fante was my God. — Charles Bukowski