I just finished the book I started on Christmas Eve, The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer. It’s a memoir, which is far and away my favorite genre. I’m a really fast reader and this took me from Christmas Eve night to last night to read, reading a bit each day to finish, which is actually a good thing. It was just that dense and winding. I felt a connection with the author in a lot of ways, especially in his childhood fears/neuroses. He mentions being terrified to be the last one awake at night. I had the same fear as a child but had never encountered anyone else with the same thing.
The ending is a bit rough, especially the epilogue, as it takes place just after 9/11. The author grew up in Manhasset on LI and that community lost 50 people in the attacks. In his capacity as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, he returned to Manhasset just after 9/11 to do a huge story on how the town was coping. Some of the characters I got to know and love through the course of the book died in 9/11.
I had read somewhere that it is an “addiction memoir” but I really didn’t see that too much. The author definitely has a problem with alcohol, as well as smoking and gambling, but it’s not the centerpiece. He tends to couch his alcoholism in his love of this one particular neighborhood bar. When the story ends he’s still drinking, then the epilogue brings us in 10 or so years later and he’s been sober for about that time.
The book really rattled me, which is a sign of a good book for me. After I finished it, I was lying in bed unable or unwilling to get up to turn off the light, my head swirling with thoughts and images. Eventually I turned off the light and had to find a happy, quiet, restful place so I could sleep.