Link to Cindy Adams' column on Last Call at Elaine's: CALL IT A LOVE LETTER TO ELAINE Link to New York Post's review of Last Call at Elaine's: FOOD, NETWORK |
Last Call at Elaine’s: A Journey From One Side Of The Bar To The Other“You may be weary of redemption stories - but this is different. The richness is in the writing: detailed, funny and with a certain barroom pungency. Elaine, herself, has been written about dozens of times but never with such insight, such tenderness. Brian McDonald has a sharp eye and an even sharper ear for New York after dark.” --Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes For as long as any of us can remember, Elaine’s restaurant has been the classy center of a certain kind of smart New York City glamour. This deft, loving, and very funny portrait of the place, written by a man who spent years behind Elaine’s bar, brings it all to life. At the center of this story is Elaine herself, a courageous and generous character who does her best to conceal her soft-heartedness. Woven together with [McDonald’s] struggle to become a writer and his battle with addiction, this book is a rich, moving, and compelling story told as well as it could have been by any of the writers who made Elaine’s their home away from home. --Susan Cheever, author of American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work A voyeur de force on Manhattan's most celebrated watering hole. Bracing as the third shot of Wild Turkey, satisfying as the House Special veal chop (after Elaine switched chefs). If the dearth of unflinchingly funny, insightful and humane prose is the problem, Brian McDonald is part of the solution. --Bill Scheft, writer for The Late Show with David Letterman & author of The Ringer and Time Won't Let Me McDonald writes courageously about his battle with addiction while leaving the reader in stitches with behind-the-bar tales from the famous New York writer's hangout - Elaine's. Buy this book before your friends start telling you to. –-Christopher Kennedy Lawford, author of Symptoms of Withdrawal Brian McDonald began using his writer’s ear on the Underwood that retired with his father from the 41st Detective Squad in the Bronx. The machine had recorded manslaughter and maiming and molesting. Now he was on a computer and into the great glow of Manhattan nights where he tended bar and looked and listened with a writer’s ear. He took a famous boss named Elaine and patrons like Frank Sinatra and Woody Allen, and the normal 15 rounds against alcohol, out into the world beyond Manhattan and gives us a big league book of life today. --Jimmy Breslin |
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