Bing Crosby's Last Song: A Novel [Hardcover]

Lester Goran (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 1998

A novel by the author of The New York Times Notable Book, Tales from the Irish Club

It is June 1968: Robert Kennedy has just been murdered, the streets are simmering with discontent, and the Irish community of Oakland Park in Pittsburgh is being swept away by change. Daly Racklin becomes the reluctant leader of a dying neighborhood, culture, and people. He is at once a man torn by his father's omnipotent shadow and the struggles of his own heart, and as his elevated position brings him from one home to another he increasingly discovers the importance of what he sees disappearing. Bing Crosby's Last Song is a hilarious, touching, heartwrenching story of survival and love, a community's demise and a wanderer's rebirth. Full of barroom lore, hard-bitten wisdom, wry humor, and faith tempered by skepticism, this novel will delight readers of William Kennedy and Frank McCourt.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1968, a 49-year-old small-time attorney learns that his heart is failing and he has only months to live. That is where Goran (Tales from the Irish Club, etc.) begins his surprisingly merry picaresque novel about Daly "Right" Racklin and all the people he generously looks after in his Irish Pittsburgh neighborhood. The merriment is surprising because death is always so close. Daly's Uncle Finnerty lies in a coma; Dr. Richard I. Pierce (Doc Rest in Peace) has been waiting 20 years for his organs to fail; Michelle Shortall's body is slowly, fatally calcifying, turning her to stone (Daly has known Michelle since he committed adultery with her widowed aunt); Owney O'Doherty, one of Racklin's drinking buddies, dies sitting at the wheel of his Cadillac; even their neighborhood is threatened by the bulldozers of the ever-expanding University of Pittsburgh. Living in the shadow of his father, an attorney and local hero who fought all the good fights, Daly never pretends to live up to the nickname he has inherited from his dad. Indeed, Daly seems happier with the mantle of his Uncle Finnerty, who called himself the Wrong Racklin and sought "an eighth deadly sin." But when not drinking at one of his many haunts (where his cronies wax nostalgic for the time when "Bing Crosby sang only for us on the haunted sidewalks of our youth"), Daly spends his days looking after those who can't look after themselves. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that he has earned the name Right, perhaps better than his father?even if he himself never realizes it. The substance of the book is not the plot but the stories the men swap over their drinks and the intricate relationships within a vibrant community dying before its time?all of it enveloped in an elegiac tenderness. Editor, George Witte; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The year is 1968 and the locale is Goran's (She Loved Me Once and Other Stories, Kent State Univ. Pr., 1997) familiar Oakland Avenue, a mostly Irish working-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh now threatened by university expansion. Bobby Kennedy has just been killed and the neighborhood is awash in sadness, self-pity, and discontent. Change does not come easily to this culture of pubs, the Church, hooligans, and in-bred cousins. Enter Daly Racklin?community fixture, sometime lawyer, and man of the streets. Despite his recent grim medical diagnosis and his chronic inability to get his life in gear, he becomes the spokesperson for his muddled neighbors as they attempt to stave off "academic sprawl." Clearly an extension of Goran's earlier short stories, this is more a nostalgic snapshot of a disappearing way of life than a novel. Colorful cohorts are posed here with little action, in much the same order as they must have sat in St. Agnes elementary school decades ago. Readers of Goran's earlier work will find little new here, but first-timers and fans of Frank McCourt, Brian Moore, and William Trevor will enjoy his characterization and wry, softly sardonic wit.?Susan Gene Clifford, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo,
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (August 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312195400
• ISBN-13: 978-0312195403
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,807,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Graceful Novel of Working Class Pittsburgh, January 8, 2001

By 

J. Mullin (Plantation, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bing Crosby's Last Song: A Novel (Paperback)

This is a moving novel about an aging lawyer and Pittsburgh native, Daly "Right" Racklin, who struggles to understand and live up to the legacy of his late father Boyce Racklin, a champion of the underdog and fellow Pittsburgh attorney. The first page of the novel paints a pretty bleak picture, as Daly is told by his doctor his heart is failing and that nothing can be done to extend his life beyond a year. Daly proceeds to try and get his life in order, all the while continuing to give of himself to family, friends, and relatives of deceased buddies who always seem to take advantage of his kindness and betray him. All of this takes place during the turbulent summer of 1968, after the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King.

Daly comes off as almost Saint-like, especially early in the novel, where he exudes a sense of calm patience when the world seems to come apart around him. He cares for a family that steals from him, because he knew their deceased father and knew he would've done the same had Daly died young and left a widow with children. Daly carries on a friendship with a blind divorcee, Jessie, and then gets involved in an unlikely, whirlwind romance with a mystical woman (Gloria Scone) that he meets at a wake. All the while, Daly is frequently visited by visions of Pretty Boy Floyd, and we learn one of the most vivid memories of his childhood was a visit to the grass field where Floyd was gunned down.

Overall, I thought this was a very moving novel, with the characters of Daly and Jessie drawn exceptionally well. The scenes in Oakland (a working class Pittsburgh neighborhood) pubs were excellent, as bartenders reminisced with Daly about his working class hero dad, the original "Right" Racklin. The author notes that it was difficult for Daly to live up the reputation of a good father. I also loved the road trip by Daly and his friends to NYC, to attend the funeral of RFK. Some of the plot twists seemed a little forced, ( I thought the whole Gloria Scone interlude was a little abrupt and unrealistic, and detracted from the novel), but overall it was an engaging read and a moving glimpse at a time and place that is infrequently visited.