Loved this book!

A Review of This Is Where I Leave You, by Jonathan Tropper


While reading This Is Where I Leave You, a novel by Jonathan Tropper, I was struck by both the similarity to other books in a genre rising in popularity, and its uniqueness within that genre. This novel is about a fractured family comprised of two parents and four siblings who have grown up and apart due to many family issues. It includes a therapist mother, Hillary, who feels it is best to shame her children into adulthood and an emotionally absent father, Mort. The story is centered around the three brothers, Paul, Judd and Phillip, and the sister, Wendy, who nurse various childhood traumas into adulthood as reasons to dislike each other as adults. The family is brought together once again in grief after Mort passes away, his dying request that his wife and children sit shiva in mourning for an entire week.
In hearing this synopsis, I was expecting a tired, overused plot, but was pleasantly surprised by both the incisive humor used to depict the characters and by situations that seemed so absurd and yet entirely realistic. The author tells the story from Judd Foxman’s point of view. Judd is the second to oldest son, whose non-Jewish wife has recently been discovered in bed with his boorish, radio shock-jock boss. The day his father passes away, as Judd is about to go to his family’s home, his estranged wife comes over to tell him she’s pregnant with his child. This is how Judd begins his week of mourning. It evolves into a revelation of family issues, both real and imagined, as well as a resumption of and ultimately an emergence from the roles they played as children.
Jonathan Tropper layers extremely weighty subject matter on his characters, including, but not limited to, infidelity, infertility, homosexuality, violence, loss of childhood dreams, masturbation and brain damage. He does this with unflinching directness: “When I was twelve years old, [my mother] unceremoniously handed me a tube of KY Jelly and said that she could tell from the laundry that I’d begun masturbating, and this would increase my pleasure and prevent chafing….My siblings did joyous spit takes into their bowls of chicken soup, and my father grunted disapprovingly and said, ‘Jesus, Hill!’ He uttered those two words so often that for a long time I thought Jesus’ last name was actually Hill. In this particular case, I was unsure if it was masturbation my father condemned or the relative merits of discussing it over Friday-night dinner.” The simultaneous view of the family unit, the mother’s outrageous behavior, the father’s lack of intervention, and the dark humor of this improbable and yet plausible situation is characteristic of this book.
This Is Where I Leave You evoked other writers, such as Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris, memoirists who mine their family stories without shame, so that their readers will be both amused and reassured of their own relative normalcy. The fictionalized genre of this story is reminiscent of the style of these writers as well as Adam Langer, author of Crossing California, who depicts characters who came of age in the 1970’s and 1980’s. This is perhaps the reason this type of story has become popular. Readers who are currently in their 30’s and 40’s will find many hilarious experiences that feel similar to their own childhoods. At one point, Judd and his brothers smoke pot in a synagogue classroom during the reading of kaddish, the prayer for the dead, and set off the fire alarm. All is forgiven since Rabbi Grodner is an old family friend, who the Foxman boys nicknamed “Boner”. They describe him as practically a member of the family who was always “’jerking off’, ‘trying to touch my boobs’ [and] ‘smoking weed’” in the house of the Foxman family.
Jonathan Tropper’s story is expertly woven, and is one of the funniest books I have ever read. It is true that few people are as unlucky as Judd Foxman, but his family’s dysfunction is reminiscent of many that I have seen. What could be a harsh story is modified by humor, tenderness and even hopeful feelings for its hapless main character. It is definitely worth the read.