I just got home from my morning book club where we reviewed the book The Tender Bar
by J.R. Moehringer. My God how, I loved this book. It is a memoir set in Manhasset, NY where Moehringer grew up and I could relate immensely to this book having been raised in the North East.
It is a coming of age book and how the men in the bar where he grew up have such an impact on his life as they are the male influences as he has a “missing” father and single mother.
If only for the character development of all the men in the book that so tickled my fancy, it would have been enough to give it a 5 out of 5 on the scale we rate our book choices. But no, there were so many other things inherently wonderful about the book. There was laugh out loud humor cover to cover. There was angst, pathos and real live feelings captured by this one time book writer. No I’m sorry, after Andre Agassi read The Tender Bar he asked Meohringer to help him write his memoirs and thus a corroboration was born. I’m wondering though, if it was a one time wonder as it’s a memoir and that is all he has to write in book form. As a Pulitzer Prize journalist, that seems to be what keeps him busy and be his career.
So, if you are looking for a good book, try this one! I highly recommend it and so does my book group, though there were some mixed reviews as there always are in a group of people. But as a whole, the group approved and liked the book.
That’s what makes Book groups fun though, hearing differing opinions on the same book. To hear other people come up with different takes on the same material can be enlightening yet disturbing at times. Sometimes it’s funny to hear a person say they did not like a book you loved so you get to see different sides of a vast variety of people, too.
Written by Evelyn Garone
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