The Tender Bar

When someone recommends a book to you it always starts with trepidation.  They love the book and expect you to as well.  Will you? That is the big question.

Someone very special gave me the book to read, I was worried this memoir would be sad.  The Tender Bar is written J.R. Moehringer who is trying to find himself while also trying to find a father figure.  Most of it takes place in a bar first called the Dickens and later the Publicans.  The bar was the only constant in his life, other than his mother.

This book follows J.R. from an eight year old in Manhasset, N.Y. to the now famous Pulitzer prize winning author.  You would think with all the trials and tribulations of his life he would be a down-trodden character.  However, he paints his life and those in it, in a light and amusing way.  You can picture each character and situation with his descriptive prose.  They all seem larger than life, but you know that with the care that he gives each one they are as real and as flawed as he shows them.

The book is hard to put down and all along the way you are rooting for him to make it.  You know he will but the ride is what is important.  We are all who we are because of what has happened in our lives and J.R. is no different.

You can hear him describe his own book in the NPR interview & review.  The book was published in 2005 and I can't believe how long it took me to put it on the reading list.  It is a quick read and you will want to pass it on to others when you are done, just as this gem was passed to me.