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Everything Changes: A Novel [Paperback]

Jonathan Tropper
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)

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Book Description

March 28, 2006
Jonathan Tropper’s novel The Book of Joe dazzled critics and readers alike with its heartfelt blend of humor and pathos. Now Tropper brings all that—and more—to an irresistible new novel. In Everything Changes, Tropper delivers a touching, wickedly funny new tale about love, loss, and the perils of a well-planned life.

To all appearances, Zachary King is a man with luck on his side. A steady, well-paying job, a rent-free Manhattan apartment, and Hope, his stunning, blue-blooded fiancée: smart, sexy, and completely out of his league. But as the wedding day looms, Zack finds himself haunted by the memory of his best friend, Rael, killed in a car wreck two years earlier—and by his increasingly complicated feelings for Tamara, the beautiful widow Rael left behind.

Then Norm—Zack’s freewheeling, Viagra-popping father—resurfaces after a twenty-year absence, looking to make amends. Norm’s overbearing, often outrageous efforts to reestablish ties with his sons infuriate Zack, and yet, despite twenty years of bad blood, he finds something compelling in his father’s maniacal determination to transform his own life. Inspired by Norm, Zack boldly attempts to make some changes of his own, and the results are instantly calamitous. Soon fists are flying, his love life is a shambles, and his once carefully structured existence is spinning hopelessly out of control.

Charged with intelligence and razor sharp wit, Everything Changes is at once hilarious, moving, sexy, and wise—a work of transcendent storytelling from an exciting new talent.

Frequently Bought Together

Everything Changes: A Novel + The Book of Joe: A Novel + Plan B
Price for all three: $36.76

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  • The Book of Joe: A Novel $12.20
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The arrival of a long-lost absent father forces a Manhattan man to come to terms with an ongoing romantic triangle in Tropper's latest, a funny, sensitive and occasionally over-the-top comic novel that revolves around the calamitous life of 32-year-old Zack King. King's a horrible job as a corporate drone for a supply company is balanced by his impending marriage to Hope, his gorgeous, successful fiancée. But chaos comes with the arrival of his wacky divorced father, Norm, who left Zack and his two brothers after his wife used graphic pictures of his infidelity as the backdrop for the family Christmas cards. Norm makes himself an unwelcome guest as Zack tries to deal with a potentially devastating health problem and a job crisis that makes him realize how much he hates his life. But the real problem is Zack's growing attraction to Tamara, the beautiful, recently widowed single mother who was married to Zack's friend Rael until a car accident took Rael's life and left Zack alive during an ill-fated road trip to Atlantic City. Viagra-popping Norm becomes increasingly cartoonish as the novel unfolds, and the triangle material is boilerplate, but pithy observations on love, marriage and corporate life give the book a graceful charm. Tropper continues to display a fine feel for romantic comedy in this enjoyable follow-up to The Book of Joe.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Tropper, author of Plan B (2000) and The Book of Joe (2004), offers up the story of Zachary King, a man in his early thirties facing a possible health crisis and major life changes. Zack is engaged to a beautiful woman, Hope, and slogging through his trying job as a middleman when he discovers blood in his urine. He makes a trip to the doctor, and as he waits for the results, he starts to question everything in his life. His job is thankless, and he is in danger of losing a big account because of another's mistake; his perfect fiancee doesn't look nearly as good to him as his best friend's widow, Tamara; and his feckless father, Norm, has dropped back into Zack's life, and for the first time, Zack finds himself inclined to consider letting the man in. As with any great comedy, high jinks ensue, including a hilarious scene where Zack, Norm, and Zack's roommate try to track down Zack's doctor. But the novel is also grounded by the serious issues at its heart: the tragic death of Zack's best friend, Norm's abandonment of his family, and Zack's struggle to do the right thing. By turns funny and moving, Tropper's warm, winning tale will appeal to both male and female readers and may draw comparisons to Nick Hornby and John Scott Shepherd. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 335 pages
  • Publisher: Bantam (March 28, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385337426
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385337427
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #96,897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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

Customer Reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
(65)
4.5 out of 5 stars
The characters are just...real. Shawn K. Maravel  |  11 reviewers made a similar statement
I couldn't wait for "Everything Changes" to come out! PJ  |  6 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
38 of 43 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars An incredibly moving and well written novel May 31, 2005
Format:Hardcover
This is the novel I've been waiting for Jonathan Tropper to write. I admired his previous novels -- PLAN B and the BOOK OF JOE, which certainly displayed his considerable talents. He sets up great premises for his characters to work through issues. He establishes a breezy pace, writes sharp, funny dialogue and spices it all with witty observations. But there were certain things about those earlier novels that drove me crazy. The narrators and other characters sometimes made cliched observations in the tone of thinking they had stated something original. The writing sometimes belabored the obvious -- making points well after the reader had already gotten it. And the character's cynicism didn't seem earned because it wasn't hard won. While I liked PLAN B nonetheless, I couldn't help but cringe everytime one of the characters whined about how difficult it was to -- YIKES!! - turn 30. I didn't have any of those frustrations reading EVERYTHING CHANGES. In fact, I felt glee on almost every page, while witnessing such a beautifully wrought and masterfully told story. Here Mr. Troppers' prodigious talents are all on full display again. The dialogue is funny and sharp and the pacing is perfect. There are some Hollywood moments -- e.g. a couple of fistfights, but still the observations his narrator, Zack, makes about life and love are profound, insightful -- and original. It's a wonderful story about a man dealing with a no-account father and his torn feelings toward his beautiful fiancee and another woman -- the widow of his late best friend -- who has become the real love of his life. The ending pages, which I won't give away, moved me almost to the point of tears. This novel will enter my own personal pantheon of great books I keep re-reading at various stages of my life. (The HERE AND NOW by Robert Cohen; Tom Perrotta's THE WISHBONES, and Glenn Savan's WHITE PALACE to name a few). Anyone who enjoyed this and would like to read a similar story should consider Marshall Boswell's, ALTERNATIVE ATLANTA, another funny and moving tale of a man struggling over his awkward relationship with his father and battling with his feelings for a forbidden woman.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Quite simply wonderful, wacky and big-hearted April 30, 2005
Format:Hardcover
Like millions of other Americans, Zack King has the worst job in the world. The hero of Jonathan Tropper's sparkling new romantic comedy EVERYTHING CHANGES, Zack is a corporate middleman in the big city, a cubicle prisoner, a man upon whom everyone can assess blame. And, like millions of Americans in call centers, financial giants, supply chain corporations, and "Office Space" cube farms, Zack hates his job.

He explains: "...we spend our days making three kinds of phone calls. We call our vendors to hound them about schedules and late deliveries; we call our clients to reassure them that everything is on schedule or to get blamed because it isn't; we call potential clients and kiss the asses of the people who will one day blame us for everything." And if that isn't enough drudgery to occupy a workday in hell, there is Zack's everyman, middleman boss. "The trick with Bill is to say as little as possible. He is notorious for his long-winded lectures on salesmanship, and you never know when a simple pleasantry might trigger a mini Dale Carnegie seminar. ... he believes that there is no problem that can't be solved with a ten-minute PowerPoint presentation."

But the job is the least of Zack's problems. He's falling in love with his late friend's wife, Tamara, and out of love with his own fiancé, Hope; his struggling rock star brother is beginning a downward spiral; his roommate, Jed, the dot.com millionaire, has decided to drop out of life and just watch television; and Zack's estranged father is loose on the streets of New York with a fistful of Viagra. And there may be an even bigger problem. Enter the mysterious stranger: a Nike swoosh-shaped shadow on one of Zack's kidneys that just might be cancer.

Tropper, who wowed readers with THE BOOK OF JOE, treads hysterically familiar territory in EVERYTHING CHANGES with his theme of the neurotic, successful thirty-something leaving the city to return home to try to settle his problems. The author's musical narrative is vastly improved from his previously respectable efforts, his fresh, authoritative voice smoothly and seamlessly taking Zack on his wild journey. It is Tropper's vivid descriptions of office life, in-love-with-the-other-woman imagery, the looming loss of a good friend, Zack's Woody Allen internal dialogue, and his flamboyant vignettes that never fail to delight, keeping EVERYTHING CHANGES at a rapid-fire pace.

Zack, his engagement, his brother, friend, father, and mother, are all at stagnant points in their lives, points that only have the illusion of moving forward. It takes Norm King, the father everyone has learned not to tolerate, to skip into town with his trail of affairs and debts not far behind, to motivate those in Zack's world to face the truth, get up off the couch, evolve, and --- most importantly --- to forgive.

Tropper's latest effort is quite simply wonderful, wacky and big-hearted, Elton John wig and all.

--- Reviewed by Brandon M. Stickney
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Not as Good as Previous Masterpieces April 29, 2005
Format:Hardcover
Everything changes is the third novel by Jonathan Tropper and although it is a worthwhile read it is not in the same high league as his masterpieces Plan B and The Book of Joe. Zachary King in this book is a similar character to Ben in Plan B and Joe from the Book of Joe. Everything Changes is also written in the same narrative, talking to the reader style as those novels.

What it lacks though is a clear plot. You knew what was going on in the other novels ie Ben and the others trying to force their celebrity friend off drugs in Plan B and Joe returning to a town he had slammed in his novel to visit his dying father in The Book of Joe. Everything Changes is just a fly on the wall view into a few weeks of a Zachary King's life and his mid life crisis, fear of bladder cancer and reunion with his father Norm who walked out on his life years before. The book is also rather predictable, you know what Zach is going to choose to do after a few chapters.

It is however entertaining and Zach's medical experiences are something every guy hopes to never go through. A good read but read the sensational novels Plan B and The Book of Joe first.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Tropper Never Disappoints!
Jonathan Tropper is one of those, as far as I'm concerned, under-rated authors. I don't think enough people read his books and I'm not entirely sure as to why. Read more
Published 10 days ago by Shawn K. Maravel
5.0 out of 5 stars So fun!
Everything Jonathan Tropper wtites makes me laugh out loud. Really good story, the main character is classic Tropper. Read up!
Published 17 days ago by Pam
5.0 out of 5 stars You won't regret reading this one!
This is one of my favorite Jonathon Tropper novels. Great character development. Funny, sad and true to life. In other words, classic Jonathon Tropper. Read more
Published 1 month ago by willis9301
5.0 out of 5 stars you will love this book
thoroughly enjoyed this book, Iam a fan of jonathan tropper, I laughed out loud at certain parts. It is very well written
Published 2 months ago by Maura Flannery
3.0 out of 5 stars true to life characters
Figured I should read a "adult" novel (meaning not young adult), and this was a great choice. Not sure where I got the recommendation to read this, but I am glad I did. Read more
Published 2 months ago by christie anderson
4.0 out of 5 stars Good storyteller
Mr. Tropper slices through life and tells a story that is a bit uncanny, yet completely believable. A fine read.
Published 2 months ago by linda keller
5.0 out of 5 stars Keeps you laughing...
As usual, the characters in this one keep you laughing in all the right places. It doesn't seem to matter what topic or setting Tropper chooses for his books, they are always sure... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Scott Maitland
4.0 out of 5 stars Great Story!
This book is very entertaining. I've read many of Jonathan Tropper's books and so far, have loved all of them. They all have a common theme of learning about who you are. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Anna
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful
Jonathan Tropper is one of my most favorite contemporary authors. I have read and enjoyed several of his books and this one is not an exception. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Luis
5.0 out of 5 stars Laughed out loud
I Laughed out load thru this entire book- I have read all of Johnathan Tropper's books - loved this one and would and have recommended it to many friends
Published 4 months ago by Pamela L. Jackson
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