This is Where I Leave You [Import] [Paperback]

Jonathan Tropper (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Orion; paperback / softback edition (2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0752885847
• ISBN-13: 978-0752885841
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (271 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,856,212 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

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

160 of 165 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Touching, Funny, Sad--a SIX star book!, June 28, 2009

By 

E. Griffin (Wilton, CT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Is Where I Leave You (Hardcover)

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This is Where I Leave You is a wonderful book will make you laugh out loud and bring tears to your eyes--truly an incandescent story about love of all kinds and forgiveness.

Judd Foxman is separated and heading towards divorce, unemployed, and living in a basement apartment, all of which are directly related to the affair his wife Jen is having with Wade, Judd's boss. Then Judd's father dies of cancer, leaving a final request that his entire family sit seven days of Shiva, and Judd and his siblings return to the suburban home where they grew up.

During the seven days of mourning, a variety of family dynamics play out. The relationship between Judd and his brother Paul is dominated by old resentment, and awkwardness with the fact that Paul's wife is one of Judd's past high-school girlfriends. Judd's sister Wendy takes the opportunity of being home to reconnect with her past love, while Phillip, the baby of the family and chronic screw-up, brings home his much older fiancé. Judd's mother Hillary is a psychiatrist who wrote a bestselling book about parenting, and her infamous directness adds more tension and humor.

While grieving for his father, Judd is also immersed in feelings of anger, betrayal, and helplessness brought on by the affair between Jen, his wife, and Wade, his boss. Once Jen tells Judd she is pregnant, Judd refuses to speak with her, leading both Jen and Wade to show up at Judd's childhood home, adding more complications and stress.

It would spoil too much of the story to tell more about any of the funny parts, but there are many throughout the book. Simultaneously, the book is bittersweet as the family mourns the Dad they loved and take small steps to mending their own relationships. This is Where I Leave You is exceptionally well written with great character development and emotion, and is a book that deserves to be read by everyone.

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, Yes...But Breakout? No., July 6, 2009

By 

Diane B. Wilkes "Diane Wilkes, Voracious Reader" (Oreland, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Is Where I Leave You (Hardcover)

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Tropper mines old themes with his new book, This is Where I Leave You. Love relationship with college soul mate? Check. Father whose love is silent and unspoken and strong? Check. Sex with old high school fantasy? Check. Issue with athletic brother and other sibling rivalries? Check. I could go on.

I've been a fan since Plan B. Tropper writes with warmth and insight and great, great humor. Some scenes are hysterically funny. This is Where I Leave You is par for the course. As long as he keeps writing lines like, "Penny's honesty has always been like nudity in an action movie: gratuitous but no less welcome for it" and shows an old friend who has become a rabbi warming up the congregation like he's in a rock venue ("What's up, everyone?" he says. "Good shabbos, Elmsbrook!"), he'll always have a follower in me.

In this variant on a theme, the protagonist, Judd, is sitting shiva for his father with his neurotic, somewhat bizarre family: his strong-willed therapist mother, his older, once star athlete brother, his sexually adventurous sister, and the baby of the family who is the classically spoiled screwup.

Judd has other problems--he's jobless and more-or-less homeless, as his wife has cheated on him with his prior boss.

How Tropper makes his story funny and hopeful is a sight to see. One change in this book is the thick haze of sexual obsession that permeates it. Is that what "breakout novel" means now? If so, you could do worse than read This is Where I Leave You. Three and a half stars...

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Is Where You Got Me, July 9, 2009

By 

Walrus (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: This Is Where I Leave You (Hardcover)

My wife handed me this book saying it was a *must read*. I started it immediately and found I could not put it down. "This is Where I Leave You" has to be the most intense, funny, true to life piece of literature I have read in years. It is not only funny, but "laugh out loud" funny. In this novel, Tropper's writing style is sharp, biting, smart, sentimental, funny, and tender. He envisions the world the way most of us do, and expresses life with incredible wit and honesty.

The story begins with the death of Mort Foxman. His death has reunited the Foxman clan for a week of sitting shiva. In the course of battling their own demons, and one another, each family member is called to reflect upon life events that have formed the basis of their lives together and their subsequent identities as individuals. The results are hilarious. I've heard that this book has already been optioned for a movie. With the right casting this story should prove to be an exceptional cinematic experience.