The Tender Bar: A Memoir
by J.R. Moehringer
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Book Summary Information
Author: J.R. MoehringerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2006-08-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Hyperion
Book Reviews of The Tender Bar: A Memoir
Book Review: A Wonderful Coming of Age Story!
Summary: 5 Stars
Manhasset, on Long Island, was famous for a two things. One, it was the backdrop for F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Two, it was famous for it's bars. Plandome Road, the main drag in Manhasset, was wall-to-wall bars. But none made on impact on JR the way Dickens did. JR and his mother were living with his grandparents, and that was exactly 142 steps from Dickens. When JR was 9-months old, his mother left her husband and moved on. A single woman trying to raise her son and working 2 or 3 jobs at a time, Dorothy tried to make it on her own. But time and time again, Dorothy and JR ended up back in Manhasset with family. At any time, the house could be filled with cousins. But JR was content there. He would sit out on the stoop with his radio and listen for The Voice. The Voice was his father, a radio DJ that JR couldn't even remember. He even talked to The Voice, to this mother's dismay. And he worried about taking care of his mom.
Eventually, JR and his mother moved to Arizona. But every summer JR returned to Manhasett to live with his grandparents. When JR was in need of guidance, he turned to his Uncle Charley, a bartender at Dickens. Uncle Charley, along with some men from the bar, would take JR to the beach, Mets games, and eventually, into their circle. They raised him with love and compassion, these "fathers".
This book is filled with themes. Fatherless boy looking for a man in his life. Single mother trying to raise a son. Blue collar kid attending the Ivy league. Coming of Age. Trying to find out who you are and who you are meant to be. And I could go on because this book is all of that and more. Beautifully written and heartbreaking at times, JR Moehringer tells the story of his life. The good AND the bad. He's very candid about his faults, probably more so than his amazing talents. I laughed and cried while reading this book. Maybe it appealed to me on some level because it's the story of a boy that loves his mother. And maybe it appealed to me because the characters in this book are real: full of faults and problems, just like me. But regardless of why, this book made me FEEL all kinds of emotions. And that is the makings of a great book!!
Summary of The Tender Bar: A Memoir
"Long before it legally served me, the bar saved me," asserts J.R. Moehringer, and his compelling memoir The Tender Bar is the story of how and why. A Pulitzer-Prize winning writer for the Los Angeles Times, Moehringer grew up fatherless in pub-heavy Manhasset, New York, in a ramshackle house crammed with cousins and ruled by an eccentric, unkind grandfather.Desperate for a paternal figure, he turns first to his father, a DJ whom he can only access via the radio (Moehringer calls him The Voice and pictures him as "talking smoke"). When The Voice suddenly disappears from the airwaves, Moehringer turns to his hairless Uncle Charlie, and subsequently, Uncle Charlie's place of employment--a bar called Dickens that soon takes center stage. While Moehringer may occasionally resort to an overwrought metaphor (the footsteps of his family sound like "storm troopers on stilts"), his writing moves at a quick clip and his tale of a dysfunctional but tightly knit community is warmly told. "While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us," Moehringer says, and his story makes us believe it. --Brangien Davis"Long before it legally served me, the bar saved me," asserts J.R. Moehringer, and his compelling memoir The Tender Bar is the story of how and why. A Pulitzer-Prize winning writer for the Los Angeles Times, Moehringer grew up fatherless in pub-heavy Manhasset, New York, in a ramshackle house crammed with cousins and ruled by an eccentric, unkind grandfather. Desperate for a paternal figure, he turns first to his father, a DJ whom he can only access via the radio (Moehringer calls him The Voice and pictures him as "talking smoke"). When The Voice suddenly disappears from the airwaves, Moehringer turns to his hairless Uncle Charlie, and subsequently, Uncle Charlie's place of employment--a bar called Dickens that soon takes center stage. While Moehringer may occasionally resort to an overwrought metaphor (the footsteps of his family sound like "storm troopers on stilts"), his writing moves at a quick clip and his tale of a dysfunctional but tightly knit community is warmly told. "While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us," Moehringer says, and his story makes us believe it. --Brangien Davis
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