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Paperback The Tender Bar: A Memoir Book

ISBN: 0306828057

ISBN13: 9780306828058

The Tender Bar

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Format: Paperback

Condition: Very Good

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Book Overview

Now a major Amazon film directed by George Clooney and starring Ben Affleck, Tye Sheridan, Lily Rabe, and Christopher Lloyd, a raucous, poignant, luminously written memoir about a boy striving to become a man, and his romance with a bar, in the tradition of This Boy's Life and The Liar's Club--with a new Afterword.

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. 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 fathering-by-committee. Torn between the stirring example of his mother and the lurid romance of the bar, J.R. tried to forge a self somewhere in the center. But when it was time for J.R. to leave home, the bar became an increasingly seductive sanctuary, a place to return and regroup during his picaresque journeys. Time and again the bar offered shelter from failure, rejection, heartbreak--and eventually from reality.

In the grand tradition of landmark memoirs, The Tender Bar is suspenseful, wrenching, and achingly funny. A classic American story of self-invention and escape, of the fierce love between a single mother and an only son, it's also a moving portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, and an unforgettable depiction of how men remain, at heart, lost boys.

Named a best book of the year by The New York Times, Esquire, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, NPR's "Fresh Air," and New York Magazine
A New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Booksense, and Library Journal Bestseller
Booksense Pick
Borders New Voices Finalist
Winner of the Books for a Better Life First Book Award

Customer Reviews

16 customer ratings | 8 reviews

Rated 5 stars
Beautiful book!

I absolutely loved this book! Beautiful coming of age story and how the absence of his father affected a young boy! I read about 30 books a month and this is a real standout!

3Report

Rated 5 stars
I ordered this after reading ‘The Glass Castle’

I ordered this after reading ‘The Glass Castle’ by Jeannette Walls. I was looking for a similar memoir and ‘The Tender Bar’ did NOT disappoint. I brought it to work with me because I didn’t want to put it down. I grew so attached to the characters and the bar. I felt like I was a regular there as well. This will definitely be added to the list of books I re-read over the years.

2Report

Rated 4 stars
Good read

Would read again

1Report

Rated 5 stars
I didn't want it to end

Simply one of the best books I've read in a long time. Although it's about a bar and drinking is involved, the book is not really a "drinking book" as much as it is about a boy's story growing into a man without a single, consistent father figure. I'd put this book in the same category as The Risk Pool by Richard Russo, another heatfelt, coming-to-age type book about a strained father-son dynamic. The writing style is poetic...

3Report

Rated 5 stars
A poignant story, reflective, funny, and wraps itself around you.

The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer tells a story about relationships and about what is worth wanting and all that is in between. It is simple, deep, and honest and even sometimes breathtaking in its earnestness to capture what makes us human, tender, fallible, and whole. I was stunned at times by both its spontaneous humor and pathos and found myself laughing out loud in public places while reading this memoir as well as suddenly...

2Report

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