The Tender Bar: A Memoir by J.R. Moehringer

Unlike most of the books reviewed in our blog, The Tender Bar: A Memoir by J. R. Moehringer is not a crime novel. It’s a coming of age autobiographical work which is beautifully written. This book is all about character development, not only of the people that Moehringer writes about, but about his own evolution as a personality and as a man. The pace of the unfolding of this story is neither too fast nor too detailed and slow. It is just right, and it’s one of those books that I was sorry it had to end. Moehringer grew up without a father, so he looked to his extended family for masculine influences and love. The descriptions of Grandpa’s house where he lived with his mother, and the people who live there are classic. Uncle Charlie is a bartender at Dickens, the classic bar in Manhasset, Long Island, the same town where Gatsby’s mansion was said to have been located. All of the people the author wrote about at the bar came alive to me. The book details the author’s childhood through his early 20s, and he writes about how well Dickens worked for him as a father substitute, until it didn’t. This book gets my very favorable recommendation, and I’m sure that I’ll read his second book, Sutton, which was released last year. Thanks to buddy Pat Iantorno for recommending this one.