After Hours at the Almost Home

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Description

It's Super Bowl Sunday at the Almost Home Bar and Grill with the hometown Broncos playing for their second championship in a row, and the already busy night is about to get busier. When the bartender walks off, she leaves the remaining staff to the chaos of the night-and with the real question. Not why did she leave but why do they stay After closing time and on a school night, Colleen's 14-year-old daughter is no stranger to the Almost Home. She'll do almost anything to leave, to move her life forward or somehow return to earlier, better times, anywhere but here. But it doesn't matter; there seems to be no way out.

For one night, we follow all of them as they make their cash, close up, and then linger into the after hours, as they always do, their lives colliding, past and present, in the dark back corner at table 14-drinking, talking, and, now, in the wake of Marna's absence, facing questions: Where did she go Will she return Why do we stay How dangerous is restaurant love

Smart, provocative, and flawlessly on target, Tara Yellen's revealing debut offers keen insights on a group of people left to put the pieces of their own lives back together in the wake of a friend's disappearance. After Hours at the Almost Home will put you in an altered state-it's got kick and goes down like a shot. But its effects might be far more lasting.

Reviews

"...the employees at the Almost Home could break your heart -- all lost and found at the same time...a snapshot of a novel, lovingly contained between the neon sign and the back door. Contents under pressure."--Los Angeles Times "In the film Waking Life, Louis Mackey poses this conundrum: "Which is the most universal human characteristic: fear or laziness" The answer is both, and in this, her debut novel, Tara Yellen shows us how easily--and inevitably--we get stuck in our ruts."--Paste "How's the read From all reports, mighty fine. Rocky critic Verna Noel Jones has selected the story of the intersecting lives at the Almost Home as one of her favorite debut novels of 2008. And independent book retailers have chosen it as a Book Sense pick for May. Which I guess makes Yellen something of a hometown hero."--Rocky Mountain News "Edgier than Cheers, as bawdy as Boccaccio's Decameron and as witty as Muriel Sparks' The Girls of Slender Means." --John Casey "Stunningly honest... Each character, in some way, is looking for escape -- some literally want to get out of Denver, while others are running from ghosts in their pasts. The very name of the bar suggests the ambivalent nature of place in this story. Yellen's characters are real and likeable, and she is apt at constructing their complicated relationships. The dialogue is spot on, from bitter off-handed comments from the sharp-tongued Lena to Colleen's drug-addled conversations with her deceased husband...an honest, unaffected story with details and dialogue that ring true on every page. I'm looking forward to reading Yellen's future work."--EnfuseMagazine.com "A writer with a rich vein of talent, and the will to use it. We will all be reading her books over the next decade."--Richard Bausch "The book asks the question, "How dangerous is restaurant love" And, in general, it opens the kitchen door and reveals the lives of those who cook and serve. Yellen writes from experience; she really has waited tables. Now, can we get fries with that"--Kansas City Star "Tara Yellen writes with extraordinary warmth and compassion, and with sly humor and flawless perceptiveness."--Chris Tilghman "Tara Yellen's novel includes plenty of male characters, but it strikes me as a book about women: how they cope...and how making a living is all too often interchangeable with making a life."--Ann Beattie