The Last Fine Time - Softcover

"[Klinkenborg] has wrapped a profound social history around, of all things, a family-owned taproom in Buffalo, NY. Researching both the city and the family . . . Klinkenborg sensitively addresses the shifts in consciousness with passing generations. Men and women born during the baby-boom years will recognize their own parents in this poignant social portrait."--Joseph F. Keppler "Seattle Times " "[A] lovingly poetic and gitty portrait of his father-in-law's bar just outside Buffalo, before its death by thoroughway and sprawl."--Reamy Jansen"Bloomsbury Review" (11/01/2005) "The Wenzeks' history joins what is finally the great American story, that of how the old world came to, and changed, the new. It's a worthy subject for a writer of Klinkenborg's talent, and he does it justice."--Robert Wilson "USA Today " The Wenzeks history joins what is finally the great American story, that of how the old world came to, and changed, the new. It s a worthy subject for a writer of Klinkenborg s talent, and he does it justice. --Robert Wilson "USA Today "" [Klinkenborg] has wrapped a profound social history around, of all things, a family-owned taproom in Buffalo, NY. Researching both the city and the family . . . Klinkenborg sensitively addresses the shifts in consciousness with passing generations. Men and women born during the baby-boom years will recognize their own parents in this poignant social portrait. --Joseph F. Keppler "Seattle Times "" "Wittily lyrical. . . . The shining prose of The Last Fine Time radiates both in space and in time." --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt "New York Times " "Brings an era to life. . . . All at once, a small, bygone portion of America becomes so real that we seem to be not so much reading about it as drawing it forth from our own memories." --Anne Tyler "Boston Globe "

Verlyn Klinkenborg's The Last Fine Time sensitively chronicles the life of a family-owned restaurant in Buffalo, New York, from its days before WWII as a Polish tavern to 1947, when it became a swank nightspot serving highballs and Frenchfried shrimp to a generation of servicemen. In the inevitable disappearance of George & Eddie's, as narrated by Klinkenborg, we see the passing of both an Old World way of life and the end of the postwar exuberance that was Eddie Wenzek's "last fine time." A loving portrait of an era and place, The Last Fine Time is, by turns, an elegy, a celebration, a social history, and a tour de force of lyrical style.