This is Where I Leave You

Written by Jonathan Tropper

Narrated by Ramon de Ocampo

Hailed as a "heartfelt family drama/belated coming-of-age story" (Publishers Weekly), This Is Where I Leave You finds Judd Foxman's life in disarray. Shortly after Judd's wife leaves him for his boss, Judd's father Mort passes away, bringing the entire family together in mourning. During this week of "sitting shiva," Judd realizes his siblings are even more dysfunctional than he is, and the confrontations that ensue are full of raw emotion and humorous consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 16, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440774362

Jonathan Tropper

Jonathan Tropper is the author of This Is Where I Leave You, How to Talk to a Widower, Everything Changes, and The Book of Joe. He lives with his family in Westchester, New York, where he teaches writing at Manhattanville College.

Reviews for This is Where I Leave You

[Sheri Edelman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was ok, enjoyed the movie more. Read for bookclub.

[erinclark_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very funny look at a family that is forced to spend an entire week together in honor of their dead father. The story deals with some very serious issues but in a humorous way that actually had me laughing out loud a few times. It is also a man's book written from a male perspective, so that was interesting to me as I am a woman... so this is how guys think I remember thinking, hmmm. Funny! Recommended.

[toobusyreading · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of my friends frequently boasts, “my family is more dysfunctional than your family.” Judd Foxman's family could put most of our families out of the running. Judd, his brothers and sister, along with various assorted significant and not-so-significant others, have come home to join their mother and sit Shiva to honor their father's last request, surprising because their father didn't believe in God. The family has not been able to spend more than a few hours together without major issues, so seven days of Shiva is a trial for all of them. Judd, newly separated, sums up the failure: “My marriage ends the way these things do: with paramedics and cheesecake.” The characters are quirky, the plot is essentially “we messed up, what are we going to do next to mess up more?”, there is plenty of bad language and sex, and everyone seems seriously damaged, usually because of their own poor decisions. Still, you can't help but root for all of them to eventually do the right thing, find the right path, forgive themselves and one another. Whether they find it or not is for the reader to decide. Well written and a very good book.

[deb32 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved this laugh-out-loud book - and even the parts that didn't make me laugh out loud, made me smile! It isn't easy to make the death of your father and sitting sivah hilarious, but this book does it. I am amazed that the author could be so consistently witty. Reading this book was like spending time with a really funny friend - like if your best bud was Ellen Degenerous or Jerry Seinfield. I am on a quest now to read everything by this author

[groovygal506 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a very funny book. I read this in a weekend and was happy to just sit and read for hours at a time. This is a story of a truly dysfunctional family who are forced to stay in the same house for seven days while they sit shiva for their deceased father. If you have siblings, you will surely see characteristics of them reflected in this book. I actually laughed out loud many times and didn't want the book to end. I would highly recommend this book.

[csmcmahon_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. Troopper paints a funny at times hilarious look at a family in the wake of the father's death. The characters all have flaws, but the flaws only make the more interesting. There was something about the way the characters were described they come off the page. I can picture these people. I know these people. This was the first book I've read by Tropper but it won't be the last. I read somewhere that he is currently adapting it for a movie. I can only hope the movie will be able to come close to the magic of this book.

[heike6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There is no doubt that Jonathan Tropper is a talented writer. He can describe a situation in detail like no one else:"Please," she says. "Tell me what you're thinking."It's an absurd request. Our minds, unedited by guilt or shame, are selfish and unkind, and the majority of our thoughts, at any given time, are not for public consumption, because they would either be hurtful or else just make us look like the selfish and unkind bastards we are. We don't share our thoughts, we share carefully sanitized, watered-down versions of them, Hollywood adaptations of those thoughts dumbed down for the PG-13 crowd.Tropper shares the unedited details that enter the character's mind, which is what I like best about his writing. There were several humorous parts in this book. While it was creative and had a lot of interesting components, overall it was a disappointment.

[greentea_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

a bit crude but kind of fun

[dreamreader_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not quite Philip Roth, not quite Tom Perrota - but close enough an amalgam of the two to keep me entertained and nodding knowingly at some of his all-too-familiar experiences with Jewish family angst.

[porch_reader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Judd Foxman's marriage is crumbling, and he has lost his job when he gets the news that his father has passed away. Their father's last wish is that the family - Judd's mother and his three siblings - sit shiva. For a family that has trouble making it through holiday dinner, it is not surprising that the week they spend together is filled with conflict. But despite the fact that the book deals with some serious issues, there are plenty of humorous moments as well. Tropper's snappy dialogue is often spot on and quite funny. It is the wry observations that made this book stand out from other family dramas. For example, Judd notes that people come to pay their respects in groups, as if they have formed "shiva alliances." Tropper doesn't pull any punches or resort to easy resolutions. Instead he describes a family that has its troubles along with its tender moments. Other than their tendency to resolve problems with physical violence a little more often than seemed necessary, the Foxman's felt like a real family to me.

[florinda_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Do you recall the Great #Franzenfruede Debate of 2010? One of the points brought up in that discussion was that certain fictional subject matter seems to be viewed differently depending on whether it’s written by a man or a woman. In making one of her arguments, Jennifer Weiner mentioned that male authors who cover the territory of “domestic" or "relationship" fiction don't seem expected to choose between commercial and critical success the way female authors are, and one of the examples she cited was Jonathan Tropper.Tropper’s last novel, This is Where I Leave You, got a pretty good reception from bloggers when it was published and has been on my Kindle for months. When I found a break in my reading schedule recently, I decided its time to be read had come. And Weiner’s not wrong; the domestic upheavals and family dysfunction that Tropper details in his story of a week with the Foxman family do seem to be more typically found in fiction written by women. However, the character viewpoint from which the story is told, and the humor and style with which it’s told, sounded pretty male to me, and I mean that in a very good way.Men and women tend to react differently to infidelity, and Judd Foxman’s reaction to the discovery that his wife has been carrying on an extended affair with his boss is a man’s reaction; he walks out on her, but not before inflicting bodily harm on the other guy with a lighted birthday cake. The losses of his marriage and his job are soon followed by the loss of his father, who left a surprising last request: he wanted his widow and children - who have been indifferently Jewish for years - to come together in the family home and sit shiva for him. The week of enforced togetherness among the four adult Foxman children and their outspoken celebrity-psychiatrist mother stirs up family business both old and new - after all, conventional wisdom suggests that a psychiatrist’s kids may be especially messed up - and serves to demonstrate that some families get along better when they don’t see each other very often.There are places where the novel is laugh-out-loud funny, and places where it feels emotionally true; in some places, it’s both. The narration is in Judd’s voice, and I liked and empathized with him; I liked most of the characters, actually, even though some weren’t terribly likable. And I may be stereotyping, but I thought that the role sex plays in the book marks it as fiction produced by a male. It’s not particularly graphic, but it is frequently on character’s minds, shaping their perceptions, and in their conversations; also, the way it’s perceived and talked about is pretty matter-of-fact, which strikes me as more of a male approach to the subject, and one I was surprisingly comfortable with.My reading last year was heavily skewed to women writers, and since they do seem more prone to writing fiction with the themes and topics that most appeal to me, I was neither surprised nor bothered by that. Having said that, I’m trying to shift the balance a little this year, and finding men whose writing comes from a similar place seems like a good way to start. This is Where I Leave You is the first of Jonathan Tropper’s novels I’ve had the pleasure of reading, but I’m quite certain that it won’t be the last.

[rachelweaver_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book is equal parts hilarity and heartbreak, full of gifted observations of what it means to struggle to connect to our families, ourselves and to romantic partners. The slapsticky gimmicks can be a little much, but Tropper has a way of turning the most ridiculous gag into a wholly real moment of wisdom that you're mostly able to immediately forgive him for the comic cliches. In general, it feels like Tropper has major Hollywood screenwriter ambitions, and this gets in the way of his talent as a novelist, but this book is definitely worth plowing through the cliched cinematic moments to get to the wise, often stunning observations.

[casualfriday_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Collect four adult siblings from an extremely dysfunctional family and force them to sit shiva for seven days for their father. It's an easy premise for funny domestic fiction or an ensemble-cast movie (which is already "in development", according to IMDB). It is narrated by Judd Foxman, who is reeling from the discovery of his wife's infidelity. His sister and his two brothers have their own issues, and the solemnity of the occasion doesn't keep them from going at each other, sometimes physically.The book is often laugh-out-loud funny; the scene where Judd walks in on his wife having sex with his boss is almost Chaucerian in its bawdy, slapstick hilarity. It's also moving and insightful about sibling and parent-child relationships. My only complaint is the extreme emphasis on sex, which makes sense in the context of the story but got wearying to me as a reader.

[dgoo_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a hilarious book if you like stories about everyday dysfunctional families headed for a train wreck of implosion only to somehow cobble together a life individually and collectively again. Fans of Nick Hornsby, Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris should enjoy this and others by Tropper.

[coolmama_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another wonderfully biting and carefully crafted novel by Jonathan Tropper. Like his other novels, I was not disappointed and constantly amazed how he fine tunes each sentence to be just perfect. Found myself laughing so much at points the tears were streaming down my face!!Poor Judd Foxman. Life isn't going too well with him. After catching his wife in bed with his boss; he moves out to the Lee's basement to hear their endless bathroom habits. Then, his father (who has been in a coma for 2 years) dies, and his last wish was that his dysfunctional family should sit shiva for him for the full 7 days. Will make a great movie.Just brilliant! Keep on writing Jonathan, I have to read more of your work!!

[jenners26 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

2 words that describe the book―Hilarious Dysfunction3 setting where the book took place or characters I met* Setting: Somewhere on the East Coast (the exact location escapes me and I’m too lazy to look it up right now), modern day* Judd Foxman is our narrator. He’s not having the best year. He caught his wife Jen in bed with his boss (a radio shock jock), which led to the loss of his job and his home. Now his father has died, and he’s been summoned home to sit shiva for seven days―despite the fact that his father was an atheist and no one in his family practices Judaism anymore. The book takes place over the course of the seven days―allowing us to meet the various members of Judd’s hilariously dysfunctional family.* The Foxman family is filled with rage, pain, dysfunction, resentment and secrets―so bringing everyone together makes for a rollicking good time (for the reader). We have the inappropriate dressing, TMI-spouting shrink mother; sarcastic older sister Wendy, whose husband is barely there even when he is there; the oldest brother Paul and his wife―both of whom have some past issues with Judd to work out; and the youngest brother Philip―the irresponsible Golden Boy who has taken up with a much older woman.4 things I liked or disliked about the book* This book was laugh-out-loud funny―I’m talking snorting a drink out of your nose type of laughter. Tropper just reels off hilarious lines page after page. I kept thinking “Why have I never read this author before? Why was this type of hilariousness kept from me?” From descriptions of his siblings (“[he was the] Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead”) to describing Judd’s marriage as ending “the way these things do: with paramedics and cheesecake,” you’ll never be far from a funny line. Even advice for paying shiva calls will crack you up:EXCERPT: "There are tricks to paying a shiva call. You don’t want to come during off-peak hours, or you risk being the only one there, face-to-face with five surly mourners who, but for your presence, would be off their low chairs, stretching their legs and their compressed spines, taking a bathroom break, or having a snack. Evenings are your safest bet, after seven, when everyone’s eaten and the room is full. Weekday afternoons are a dead zone. Sunday is a crapshoot. Do a drive-by and count the parked cars before you stop. If you’re lucky, there will already be a conversation going on when you come in, so you won’t have to sit there trying to start one of your own. It’s hard to talk to the bereft. You never know what’s off-limits."* Yet at the same time, the story is filled with very real and complex emotions. Tropper does a brilliant job of walking the tightrope between hilarity and angst―without tipping too far one way or the other. I think this is very difficult to do, yet Tropper seems to pull it off effortlessly. Judd is devastated by his divorce―desperate, needy and confused. You feel his pain throughout the story―especially when his ex-wife hits him with some very disconcerting news. And as the Foxmans work through their long buried issues as a family, I think most readers will be able to relate to the confusing emotions that can arise. The Foxmans felt utterly real and alive to me―albeit way funnier than most families.* I loved how Tropper focused on all the members of the Foxman family to one degree or another. Everyone has their own issues, and it all comes out during the shiva. It felt realistic and messy―just like real life. In addition, the Foxman’s family friends and neighbors make appearances and are brought to life as much as the family members. I loved how Tropper created these quick sketches that fleshed out each character’s personalities and foibles in just a few lines. I could instantly imagine such minor players as the clueless older neighbor who is trying to make a move on the new widow or the young girls who flock around Philip and cause his girlfriend anxiety.* I enjoyed this book so much I immediately went to Paperback Swap and ordered most of Tropper’s earlier books. Based on this book alone, he’s earned a place on my “favorite authors” list. Let’s hope his other books are filled with as much wit and pathos as this one!5 stars or less for my rating:I’m giving the book 4.5 stars. I just loved this book to pieces! Tropper combined humor with true emotion―an unbeatable combination in my mind. If you’re in the mood for laugh-out-loud contemporary fiction also taps into the all too real and messy emotions of life, this book would be the perfect choice. A word of caution though: The book can be a bit raunchy at times, and the language might make some blush. If stuff like that bothers you, this book might not be the best choice for you.

[labibliophille · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I got this book because I've been hearing a lot about author Jonathan Tropper. He lives in the same town I do, and I know a number of people who have read and enjoyed his books. I was told that he very often uses fictionalized versions of local people and places in his work, so I thought I might find this interesting and enjoyable.This is Where I Leave You tells the story of the dysfunctional Foxman family. The family patriarch has just died, and his widow has told her four children that their father's dying wish was for the family to sit Shiva for him for seven full days, as is traditional in Judaism.Unfortunately, the adult children have not spent much time together in recent years, and there are many unresolved issues between them, and with their parents. As the Foxman clan (including spouses, a girlfriend, and children) crowd into the family home, old resentments and grudges arise. And as their friends, neighbors and relatives visit to mourn with them, things become more complicated.The story is narrated by Judd Foxman, the third oldest child. His father's death comes as his own marriage is falling apart, and he has lost his job. He is hopeless about his future; he is also judgmental of his mother, his siblings, and the choices they have made.This is Where I Leave You is a decent, coherent, and fairly well-written book. Unfortunately I find that the characters are shallow and predictable. The male characters are condescending to women, and have no sense of personal boundaries. The judgments made about women are extremely harsh, with all sorts of boorish behavior by the grown men excused because of their previous difficulties.I am particularly appalled by the sweeping generalities the author makes about women. When he wants to denigrate the women that one of the Foxman brothers dates, he says they are either waitresses, hairdressers, or actresses, and implies that he should date a higher class of women. And what makes Tropper so great that he is better than a waitress? Well-so maybe this is really a book for guys. I certainly won't be reading any more of Tropper's books!

[rincey_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Why did this book get such amazing reviews? I felt like I spent half of the book listening to the narrator whine about how horny he was. Or hearing his ex-wife complaining and not understand why he was so upset at her for cheating on him. The entire time through this book I wanted to punch everyone in the face.

[ccayne_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tropper is very funny. This book has the makings of a Judd Apatow film and it is set to be made into a movie. The Foxman family gathers to sit shiva for their father, who was not religious but expressed this as his final wish. There are three brothers and their sister Wendy and under normal circumstances, they do not spend time with each other. The shiva week is very funny, lots of old jealousies, sex (real and imagined) and is Judd's first family visit since discovering his wife in bed with boss, Wade, host of a radio show called Man Up.

[librarybrandy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Light read on heavy topics, lots of humor and clever writing. Not a bad way to finish off the year.

[beckyjg · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tolstoy observed in Anna Karenina that while all happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Using this rule of thumb it can be safely said that the Foxman family of This Is Where I Leave You is unique. Their story opens with Judd--narrator and third of the family's four adult children--receiving news of his father's death from his sister Wendy. "Dad's dead," Wendy says offhandedly, like it's happened before, like it happens every day. It can be grating, this act of hers, to be utterly unfazed at all times, even in the face of tragedy. "He died two hours ago." "How's Mom doing?" "She's Mom, you know? She wanted to know how much to tip the coroner." I have to smile, even as I chafe, as always, at our family's patented inability to express emotion during watershed events.Judd learns from Wendy that their father's last wish was to have the family sit shiva. Not only does Judd not want to sit shiva, which means an entire week of family togetherness, but their father had been an atheist, which makes his last wish seem particularly capricious.And, oh yes, Judd is still reeling from having come upon his wife in flagrante delicto, in his own bedroom, with his boss, who is a foul-mouthed vulgarian, a shock jock who hosts a program called Man Up with Wade Boulanger. Having come home early to surprise his wife, Jen, on her birthday, Judd happens to have a chocolate-strawberry cheesecake topped with thirty-three burning candles in his hands; this he attempts to shove as far up his boss's bare ass as possible, thereby igniting the performance enhancing cream slathered all over...um, yeah.So Judd's feeling a little delicate these days. Wade's moved into Judd's own house with Jen, Judd's jobless, living on take-out in a damp basement rental, and his family is not known for observing boundaries.How many different ways--most of them far worse--a book could go from a beginning like this. It might be a story of reconciliation and redemption, full of hugs and tears and maybe a baby at the end. Or perhaps an unending litany of snarky one-liners and familial back-biting. This Is Where I Leave You does have some of these elements--snarky reconciliation, let's say, maybe a little redemption through back-biting--but it's so much more. Tropper's writing is crystal clear and gorgeous; he's a master of the funny but thoughtful one-liner, the sort that makes the reader do a double take. "It's like Stephen King is writing my dreams in to Penthouse Forum," Judd concludes after describing a particularly vivid variation on a recurring erotic dream in which he is a partial amputee.The characters could be caricatures or stereotypes, and they often teeter just on the verge of becoming so. But the mostly unflinching eye Judd turns on his family (and on himself), yanks them back from the edge of caricature whenever they're about to fall over.This Is Where I Leave You is, quite simply, a nearly perfect book. The writing is beautiful, Judd's voice is fresh and funny, and if he does learn something along the way, don't worry--you will never mistake this story for a Lifetime Movie Network movie.

[suesbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a fairly funny book, somewhat cleverly written about a dysfunctional family sitting shiva together for 7 days. every character was cartoonish, and the amount of sex without commitment was unbelievable. however, i did care about some of the characters, and i was willing to go along with the unreality of the book.

[nbmars · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I haven’t laughed out loud like this from a book in a long time – once even laughing until I was crying. Ordinarily this would be a good thing, except I read this on a packed plane from Tucson to Chicago a couple of weeks ago. My husband was in the middle seat, with nowhere to shrink from his embarrassment as I banged on the seat in paroxysms of hysteria, shoving the book at him and saying over and over, "Oh, read this page, just one more, you have to read this!"... Here’s the bizarre thing about this book: it has a very similar plot to that of The Believers by Zoe Heller, which I absolutely hated. Tropper, unlike Heller, understands how to get you to love a very, very dysfunctional family. This Is Where I Leave You begins with the death of the father, Mort Foxman, from metastatic stomach cancer. Their mother Hillary informs them that their atheist father’s last wish was that they “sit shiva” for him. This is a Jewish custom requiring that the family spend seven (“shiva”) days together in mourning before they get back to their regular lives. (The purpose is not only to honor the dead, but to cut off the mourning process, so that families do not spend too much time focusing on death instead of celebrating life.) So the Foxman children, Judd (34) – the narrator, his older sister Wendy, older brother Paul, and younger brother Philip gather at their mom’s house for the shiva. Paul’s wife and Wendy’s husband and kids also come, along with Philip’s latest girlfriend. Judd’s wife, Jen, is not there because they have separated; he moved out of their house two months before after finding Jen in bed with his boss.The book takes you through the seven day ritual. Over the seven days, the family, long scattered by school and marriage and jobs, gets to know each other all over again. While this may not seem like a setting for hilarity, it very often is. There are so many funny things about this book, and so many comical passages that I ran out of stickies twice just marking the ones I wanted to quote. (So I guess I won’t be using all of the quotes!) But the problem is, if I conveyed all the funny bits to you, I would spoil it for you. I want to give you a flavor for the writing, however, so I’ll steer clear of the humor (not easy to do) and go for the bittersweet. In this passage, Judd is imagining having a conversation with his boss. He begins by talking about how he and Jen were wildly in love… at first. Then he continues:"I want to tell him how he and the love of his life will slowly fall into a routine, how the sex, while still perfectly fine, will become commonplace enough that it won’t be unheard of to postpone it in favor of a television show, or a late-night snack. … how he’ll feel himself growing self-conscious telling funny stories to their friends in front of her, because she’s heard all his funny stories before; how she won’t laugh at his jokes the way other people do; how she’ll start to spend more and more time on the phone with her girlfriends at night. How they will get into raging fights over the most trivial issues: the failure to replace a roll of toilet paper, a cereal bowl caked with oatmeal left to harden in the sink, proper management of the checkbook. How an unspoken point system will come into play, with each side keeping score according to their own complicated set of rules. I want to materialize before that smug little shit like the Ghost of Christmas Past and scare the matrimonial impulse right out of him.” Evaluation: I enjoyed this book immensely. And while I laughed quite often, it is a book about leaving – whether through death or separation or leaving the past behind or even physically leaving – getting in the car and just driving. So it has some sad moments as well. But really, not too many; it's more like a Seinfeld episode, in which pathos is just an excuse for another comedy routine. Highly recommended!

[bkohl_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The worst year of Judd's life, in which he finds his wife sleeping with his boss and loses his father to stomach cancer, culminate in the seven days the four siblings, who mostly can't stand each other, are required to sit shiva.The narrator is wry, and the forced company of family is full of comedic possibility, which Tropper doesn't leave on the table. There were some ick moments (Alice!), but on the whole it was hard to put down.

[whisper1_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book has passages wherein you laugh right out loud, and keep right on laughing until you side hurts. And, then again, there are passages where the story line becomes repetitive, redundant, and the silly phrases fall flat.Judd Foxman and his family are "dysfunctional" to the max. His successful mother wrote a best selling novel about child rearing. Like some psychologists who tell others how to raise a family, she hasn't done such a great job herself.Judd's siblings quarrel, get in fist fights, throw acerbic emotional verbal bombs at each other and judge harshly.Judd's life is upside down after finding his wife in bed with his boss.And now, this cast of characters is stuck together for seven days while sitting shiva for Judd's recently departed father.The book started out well. It was fun to read, until I grew weary of the dysfunction. I felt the author didn't know when to quit. He could have ended 100 pages sooner.I give it 2.5 stars.

[cat1ballou · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ok, so this was on loan from the library for a week. That means it automatically moved straight to the top of my pile, and thank goodness for that. Let me tell you, this book is great; if I deprived myself of it for even another couple of days, I would have been very upset with myself. The book isn't quite good enough to get me to spend $25 on a copy of my very own, but you can bet it's going on the list of used paperbacks to acquire. It's not hard to see why the good reviews just keep pouring in.

The book itself is darkly comic: the protagonist is miserable and relate-able, even with his family as seriously messed up as they are. Everyone is spending time together sitting shiva for their father after his death. This plot device allows for some pretty great familial interaction - I laughed out loud several times, not my usual reading experience.

[bragan_8 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Judd Foxman is not having a good time lately. First, he caught his wife in bed with his boss. Then his father died. Now he's been told that Dad, despite not being much of a believer or particularly big on Jewish tradition, expressed a dying wish for his family to sit shiva for him, meaning Judd now has to spend seven full days with his family, which might be more than any of their sanities can survive intact.The basics of the story here feel fairly familiar. You've got a wacky dysfunctional family, complete with such standbys an over-sexualized, over-sharing mother, a ne'er-do-well younger brother, and several men so emotionally repressed they'd rather communicate by fighting than by talking. You've got various liaisons and breakups and marital infidelities. And you've got a protagonist who spends a heck of lot of time feeling sorry for himself about the state of his love life. But it all works surprisingly well, mainly because Tropper's writing is terrific. He has a real knack for coming up with exactly the right phrasing to bring out the humor or absurdity or emotional reality in the situations he's writing about, and the result is sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant and insightful, and occasionally all of those things at once.I can't help comparing it to Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, which I read earlier this year. I know a lot of people found that one very funny and very relatable, but while I appreciated some aspects of it, it just didn't click for me very well. This one does for me all the things that I think High Fidelity was trying to do but didn't quite pull off.This is the first novel by Tropper that I've read, but I'm thinking it probably shouldn't be the last.

[mabrown2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"This is Where I Leave You" was the first Jonathan Tropper novel I ever read and I have to say I was impressed. I enjoyed the sardonic humor that was present throughout the entire story and got a kick out of the Foxman family dynamic. In this book, Judd Foxman returns to his childhood home to attend his father's funeral and to sit Shiva with his family - his father's dying wish. None of his siblings are thrilled with the notion as they typically cannot stand to be together for more than a day and each brings with them their own personal baggage. Judd is recently separated, having discovered his wife and boss were having an affair, leading him to quit his job and move into a basement apartment in the city. When he arrives at the funeral, he finds no comfort from his family as they are all equally self-absorbed and more interested in their own problems. As the days tick by, the siblings interact more, unload old grudges, argue and generally create more drama when things start to seem normal. As for Judd, his relationship with his soon-to-be ex-wife gets further complicated when he finds out she's pregnant and runs into an old flame of his who still lives in the area. Dysfunction abounds in this novel yet the humorous tone makes it bearable as well as believable. There is little resolution when all is said and done but what is there is realistic and fitting. Too much closure would have taken away from the story so I found the balance just right. Definitely a book worth picking up and reading. One of my favorite reads this summer!

[readingrebecca · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

To sit down with a Jonathan Tropper book is like inviting an old friend into your home, someone whom you cherish, someone you know can make you laugh out loud and make your cry like a baby with his wonderful stories. This Is Where I Leave You is no exception. Judd Foxman’s father has just died after a long illness. But Judd’s wife has recently left him because she’s having an affair with Judd’s boss. Consequently Judd has left his employer, quite understandable under the circumstances. As you can see, Judd has more than his share of things on his mind. Add on to this the fact that Judd’s father’s last wish was that the family sit Shiva. And not the three day kind that is currently more popular, but the entire week long Shiva. So Judd, his brothers Paul and Phillip, his sister Wendy and their mother, along with assorted husbands, wives, significant others and some small children all meet at the family home to begin a week long grieving process. Never a particularly affectionate or demonstrative family after the children grew up; this enforced closeness wears a bit on the nerves of those present.What follows is a wonderful story of family and all its foibles and its troubles—all the things that most families deal with. Jonathan Tropper is an incredible author. His writing is so clear, you can visualize every character. You know them; you went to school with most of them, you loved to talk about them behind their backs. Maybe you even married one of them. You love them or you hate them, but you most definitely do not feel indifferent to them. This is the kind of book you want to read with your best friend, sharing the laughter and the tears, quoting back great lines to each other. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a family, had a family, is part of a family, or may some day have a family. And isn’t that all of us?

[theampersand · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Judd Foxman's life has taken some bad turns lately. His blond, thin, conventionally attractive wife has left him for his former boss, a braying, misogynistic radio show host. His older brother, the responsible one, is still angry at him an incident that happened when they were teenagers, while his younger brother, the irresponsible one, seems to want to sleep with every woman that'll have him. His mother, a pop psychology superstar, wears embarrassingly revealing outfits, and, heck, to top it all off, he's supposed to sit shiva for his dad, who recently lost a battle with cancer. That means he has to spend seven days under the same roof with these loonies that he calls a family. The fun really begins when...oh, heck, if this sounds like the plot of a mid-grade family comedy, that's because it is. IMDB tells me that a movie version of "That's Where I Leave You" is already in development, and I bet Ben Stiller is reading a treatment of it as I type. Just for the record, I can see an addiction-era Robert Downey, Jr. as the younger brother. "That's Where I Leave You" might be the first work of literature to claim "Home for the Holidays," "Death at a Funeral" and Chevy Chase's "Christmas Vacation" as influences, and that's not a good thing. Another reviewer here has compared the book to "The Royal Tennenbaums," but I'm not going to give Tropper that much credit. This isn't to say that "That's Where I Leave You" is necessarily a terrible book, or that Tropper is necessarily a terrible writer. The book's real subject isn't the senior Foxman's death but the Foxman children's brave attempts to take stock of the messes they've made of their own lives and to mourn for the lives they might've had. This part of the book is written with real insight and genuine melancholy, and it's leavened by Tropper's funny, if occasionally broad, comic prose. Tropper makes the mistake, though, of peppering this narrative with too much improbable, unnecessary slapstick and a boatload of raunchy sex. The pairing of sex and death is perhaps the oldest trick in humanity's book, but they seem oddly mismatched here. If mourning, for the deceased and for the past, carries this book's emotional and intellectual weight, the sex is played just for laughs, and, as the book progresses, it begins to feel a bit lopsided. Tropper compounds this problem by leering at his female characters as often as he describes them and by importing a few of his characters, namely the party-guy youngest Foxman, the awkwardly hip young rabbi, and one of Judd's too-perfect-to-be-real old flame, straight from the multiplex. In short, is "This is Where I Leave You" funny? Yes, it is. Is it great literature? Nope. Will it make a good movie? Maybe for a matinee. As of right now, though, it's just more evidence that books have ceased to be independent works of art and have become "properties" designed to cross "platforms" and make somebody in California a whole lot of cash. That's depressing, but sort of funny, too. Sort of like death itself, I guess.