This is Where I Leave You :: Jonathan Tropper

Title: This is Where I Leave You [anything goes book club selection, TG]

Author: Jonathan Tropper

Read: NYC

Format: kindle

This September, the book club decided to go the contemporary fiction route with Jonathan Tropper's This is Where I Leave You.

At the beginning of the novel, the recently separated (and cuckolded) Judd Foxman learns his father has died. He heads to his childhood home to sit shiva with his child psychologist mother and neurotic adult siblings. Over the course of his days at home, secrets, grudges, and grief (over his lost father and his lost youth) are explored. It kind of sounds insufferable, but Tropper's sharp wit and at-times beautiful writing steer the novel clear out of maudlin waters (for the most part). Even when he's being angsty and poignant (the novel is ostensibly about death and aging, after all), Tropper's easy humor makes those pills go down pretty smoothly.

I read this book during a very difficult time. The one year anniversary of my brother's death was looming and the reality of mourning and grief was as real as the building anxiety as the exact date drew closer. I cried a lot while reading as I was genuinely moved by the honesty in the characters' sadness and in the different ways it manifested.

I also found the relationships between the adult siblings really interesting. Over the years I've thought a lot about how adulthood reshapes the way we interact with our siblings when your (or at least my) understanding of them as people was born in a long-ago-far-away place. A lot of the way Judd is both a part of his family and apart from his family is so familiar to me. As is the fact that that there's really nothing like tragedy to wrench you out of that in-between place and make you realize you simply have to make choices about the way you want your relationships to be and then go with it.

This write up really doesn't do any justice to how light and funny the book really is. It's a fast read and, in my opinion, worthwhile. But, I can't promise that if I had read this book 14 months ago I would have had the same experience.

Sad and provoking. Also funny and sweet.

4 out of 5 stars.