A Gritty Little Tourist Town: Bar Tales From Costa Rica Book Review

Full disclosure: I was given an ARC of this book from SparkPoint Studio in exchange for an honest review.

It’s always fun going into bars. I found some interesting people there. More likely than not, good stories will come out of bars. Willa Goodfellow knows plenty of them. She even wrote them down for her memoir, A Gritty Little Tourist Town: Bar Tales From Costa Rica. It’s a funny memoir with a great atmosphere and, of course, good stories.

A Gritty Little Tourist Town: Bar Tales From Costa Rica is a memoir surrounding a group of expatriates (expats) entertaining each other by telling stories at a bar in a Costa Rican village. Willa and her wife, Helen, travel to Costa Rica to visit family, but they discover more than they ever expected. In a sleepy village off the coast of the Pacific Ocean, they meet a curious and vibrant group of expats looking for paradise, or at least some cheap beer. At the local bar – the Pato Loco, they meet a cast of colorful characters. They include Mama, the blind 72-year-old co-owner of the place; her partner, Mary, Willa’s sister, a bartender, and an installation artist; and Richie, the aging hippie whose words are few but mighty. These and other people answer questions like what is it like to live in another country, how does a tight-knit community face the pressure of development, and how do you perform CPR on a fish? This collection of stories follows Willa as she discovers a connection with a community of strangers, one bar tale at a time.

I’ve never been to Costa Rica, but I knew people who went there while I was in college as part of their study abroad program. Even my husband’s cousin has been there too, Regardless, I could imagine the area where the main cast lived in that country, and the Pato Loco – the bar/restaurant/inn Willa’s family runs. I also had no trouble picturing the tropics as well as the critters that greet Willa and Helen every time they went down there. It was so vivid that it made me want to travel to Costa Rica and visit the Pato Loco sometime. I’m glad that Lonely Planet highlighted it in one of their travel guides.

And of course, the stories in the book were informative and fun. I learned so much about Costa Rican culture like its influx of Nicaraguan immigrants and how the locals celebrate Easter with Semana Santa. My favorite tales involved Mary. She is a force to be reckoned with. In one story, Willa discusses how much Helen loves the ocean, especially fishing. After one morning of fishing, Helen comes into the bar, and Mary asks her if she caught anything. She said no, thus breaking the fisherman’s cardinal rule: any story worth telling is worth improving. Luckily, Helen recovered quickly by saying the following, “Mary, you should have been there. The fish were biting, the fish were jumping, the fish were walking on water. They were flying, they were attacking the pelicans!” (p.54).

I can only imagine the stink eye Mary gave to Helen after that first response.

Another tale that I alluded to earlier was when Mary performed CPR on a fish. She, Richie, and two of their friends were fishing when Richie caught a four-footer. He got a picture with it and threw it back into the ocean since that’s another rule fishermen have to follow. However, the fish went belly-up. Mary turned into Aquaman and saved the fish through CPR. How did she do this? One has to read the book to find out. All I have to say is that it made me love her even more.

I enjoyed these stories, but there was one problem. It doesn’t have much of a core. In other words, there was barely anything that made me invested throughout. I know that it’s a little strange to say that, considering it’s a good collection of bar tales. They needed a theme to show why they are being told. I recently read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (review will be up soon). In it, the main character writes a collection of stories based on interviews she conducts with the residents on the island of Guernsey and how they survived Nazi occupation during World War II. At one point, her publisher tells her that the novel needs a core, or something that holds everything together. I wish A Gritty Little Tourist Town had more of that. There could have emphasized Willa’s struggles to write a story or how the Pato Loco brought people together. As of now, it’s simply good for one full read.

A Gritty Little Tourist Town: Bar Tales From Costa Rica by Willa Goodfellow is a fun memoir. It’s full of memorable characters and bar stories in a unique location that I want to visit. On the other hand, there wasn’t much to latch onto after I finished reading it since it lacked a core. Nonetheless, I would recommend it for those looking to go to Costa Rica and visit bars, as well as books by LGBTQ+ authors. A Gritty Little Tourist Town: Bar Tales From Costa Rica is out now, so grab it wherever you get your books.

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