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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2005, 370 pages
Paperback:
Aug 2006, 432 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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From the book jacket:
J.R. Moehringer grew up captivated by a
voice. It was the voice of his father, a New
York City disc jockey who vanished before
J.R. spoke his first word. Sitting on the
stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.R.
would strain to hear in that plummy baritone
the secrets of masculinity and identity.
Though J.R.'s mother was his world, his
rock, he craved something more, something
faintly and hauntingly audible only in The
Voice.
At eight years old, suddenly unable to find
The Voice on the radio, J.R. turned in
desperation to the bar on the corner, where
he found a rousing chorus of new voices.
Cops and poets, bookies and soldiers, movie
stars and stumblebums, all sorts of men
gathered in the bar to tell their stories
and forget their cares. The alphas along the
bar—including J.R.'s Uncle Charlie, a
Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi
Bear sound-alike; and Joey D, a softhearted
brawler—took J.R. to the beach, to
ballgames, and ultimately into their circle.
They taught J.R., tended him, and provided a
kind of fatherhood-by-committee.
Comment: The Tender Bar is a
gorgeous memoir in the tradition of coming of age biographies such as
Angela's Ashes and
All Over But The Shoutin'. If you're
thinking that you can't see the attraction
in reading about a boy 'brought up' in a bar
take a look at some of the reviews at
BookBrowse, including 3 starred
pre-publication reviews.
A couple of the critics complained that Moehringer rubbed too many of the rough edges off the
lives of the men who frequent Dickens (on the assumption that a group of men who
spend most of their free waking hours in the
bar are unlikely to be leading trouble-free
lives), but I would argue that Moehringer is writing
an ode to the culture of the local pub that
was such an integral part of his childhood,
and the men who became his surrogate fathers
- and while he himself grew to be unhappy
with his drinking habits and slowly grew
away from the bar, there is no reason for
him to pull the rug on those who loved him
and supported him by exposing them "warts
and all", especially as his awareness of
such faults would probably have come from
him retrospectively as an adult.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in October 2005, and has been updated for the
August 2006 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
If you liked The Tender Bar, try these:
by Tim Sultan
Published 2018
Imagine that Alice had walked into a bar instead of falling down the rabbit hole. In the tradition of J. R. Moehringer's The Tender Bar and the classic reportage of Joseph Mitchell, here is an indelible portrait of what is quite possibly the greatest bar in the world—and the mercurial, magnificent man behind it.
by Brando Skyhorse
Published 2015
From PEN/Hemingway award winner Brando Skyhorse comes this stunning, heartfelt memoir in the vein of The Glass Castle or The Tender Bar, the true story of a boy's turbulent childhood growing up with five stepfathers and the mother who was determined to give her son everything but the truth.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
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