Campus Reads : Later, Back at the Bar by Rebecca Barry

This novel in short stories presents the lives of a group of people living in a small New York town. Each story and each character has the same bar in common. As the characters move in and out of marriages, sexual relationships, houses, jail, and drinking binges, the author shows us the loss and pain lying deep inside each of them.

This book might remind you of Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat, or Winesburg, Ohio, but it stands quite well on its own. At first the characters seem like nothing more than a bunch of shiftless ne'er do wells, but Barry lets details drop in the story that suddenly allow you to see beneath the behavior on the surface.

Review by Doug Frazier, University Librarian, Lane Library.