Product Description

The death of Judd Foxman's father marks the first time that the entire Foxman family-including Judd's mother, brothers, and sister-have been together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd's wife, Jen, whose fourteen-month affair with Judd's radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public.

Simultaneously mourning the death of his father and the demise of his marriage, Judd joins the rest of the Foxmans as they reluctantly submit to their patriarch's dying request: to spend the seven days following the funeral together. In the same house. Like a family.

As the week quickly spins out of control, longstanding grudges resurface, secrets are revealed, and old passions reawakened. For Judd, it's a weeklong attempt to make sense of the mess his life has become while trying in vain not to get sucked into the regressive battles of his madly dysfunctional family. All of which would be hard enough without the bomb Jen dropped the day Judd's father died: She's pregnant.

This Is Where I Leave You is Jonathan Tropper's most accomplished work to date, a riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind-whether we like it or not.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #701 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780525951278
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, August 2009: Jonathan Tropper writes compulsively readable, laugh-out-loud funny novels, and his fifth book, This Is Where I Leave You is his best yet. Judd Foxman is oscillating between a sea of self-pity and a "snake pit of fury and resentment" in the aftermath of the explosion of his marriage, which ended "the way these things do: with paramedics and cheesecake." Foxman is jobless (after finding his wife in bed with his boss) and renting out the basement of a "crappy house" when he is called home to sit shiva for his father--who, incidentally, was an atheist. This of course means seven days in his parent's house with his exquisitely dysfunctional family, including his mom, a sexy, "I've-still-got-it" shrink fond of making horrifying TMI statements; his older sister, Wendy, and her distracted hubby and three kids; his snarky older brother, Paul, and his wife; and his youngest brother, Phillip, 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." Tropper is wickedly funny, a master of the cutting one-liner that makes you both cringe and crack up. But what elevates his novels and makes him a truly splendid writer is his ability to create fantastically flawed, real characters who stay with you long after the book is over. Simultaneously hilarious and hopeful, This Is Where I Leave You is as much about a family's reckoning as it is about one man's attempt to get it together. The affectionate, warts-and-all portrayal of the Foxmans will have fans wishing for a sequel (and clamoring for all things Tropper). --Daphne Durham

From Publishers Weekly
Tropper returns with a snappy and heartfelt family drama/belated coming-of-age story. Judd Foxman's wife, Jen, has left him for his boss, a Howard Stern–like radio personality, but it is the death of his father and the week of sitting shivah with his enjoyably dysfunctional family that motivates him. Jen's announcement of her pregnancy—doubly tragic because of a previous miscarriage—is followed by the dramas of Judd's siblings: his sister, Wendy, is stuck in an emotionless marriage; brother Paul—always Judd's defender—and his wife struggle with infertility; and the charming youngest, Phillip, attempts a grown-up relationship that only highlights his rakishness. Presided over by their mother, a celebrated parenting expert despite her children's difficulties, the mourning period brings each of the family members to unexpected epiphanies about their own lives and each other. The family's interactions are sharp, raw and often laugh-out-loud funny, and Judd's narration is unflinching, occasionally lewd and very keen. Tropper strikes an excellent balance between the family history and its present-day fallout, proving his ability to create touchingly human characters and a deliciously page-turning story. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Carolyn See Judd Foxman, the hapless narrator of Jonathan Tropper's hilarious new novel, "This Is Where I Leave You," can hardly believe it when his sister, Wendy, phones to say that their father is dead. But even more shocking is the news that Dad's last request was for them to sit shiva for seven days. This traditional Jewish form of mourning requires that the family reunite, cover the mirrors so as not to think of vanity, and open the home to friends and relatives so that they can all pay honor to the deceased. If that sounds like a bad Thanksgiving dinner that goes on for a week, it is, and Judd's heart sinks. He knows that his older brother, Paul, can barely stand the sight of him and that Phillip, his younger brother, has screwed up with so many bad investments and drug deals that the family can barely stand the sight of him, either. Their mother is an embarrassment on countless levels; she sports breast implants the size of volley balls, dresses like a hooker and, most maddeningly of all, has written a book on child rearing called "Cradle and All," which has become an American classic coming up on its 25th anniversary. Why, God, why? Judd wonders. Why has his father seen fit to put them through this? He wasn't even religious. Judd's not up for it. He's still reeling from his own family debacle. Just a few weeks before, he came home from work to surprise his wife, Jen, with a birthday cake full of lit candles and, in the words of the old song, got a crash course in "the cold hard facts of life." Judd caught his wife in bed with his own notoriously crude boss, shock jock Wade Boulanger. After watching this disheartening spectacle for a minute or two, Judd jammed the cake onto his boss's behind, setting him on fire. But all this is a mere diversion from the awful reality. His wife, his beloved wife, has been having an affair with this coarse lizard of a man for about a year, and Judd's entire appraisal of himself has been shattered. He takes shelter in an all-encompassing rage, which is painful but emotionally safe. He throws some furniture around and quits his job and rebuffs Jen at every turn. The more she tearfully says they have to talk, the more he sneers. So, Judd's idea of a good time in the midst of all this drama is certainly not hauling out to his old childhood home and sitting shiva. But there it is; he has to do it. The funeral is rainy and predictably glum; the younger brother is predictably late. Their old house, diminished and sad, sports shiva chairs low to the ground. His mom's best friend is pitching in with food, and her brain-damaged son lurks in the kitchen. The new rabbi was in high school with the older Foxman boys, who remember him as an avid porno fan. The seven days of shiva get off to a bleak start. The Foxman brothers may look like grown men flirting with middle age, but over the period of a week we see that they're still kids, nursing adolescent grudges, smarting from old hurts. Paul, the eldest, has good reason to blame Judd for an accident that robbed him of a baseball career -- or maybe it isn't a good reason, and maybe his baseball career was nothing but a fantasy. Whatever the real story, Paul bursts into tears over it in a bar where the brothers go to drown in a mixture of grief, testosterone and the general confusions of life. They're right to be confused. When Jen suddenly appears, Judd rails at her with Victorian prudery, but then commits an act of adulterous misbehavior that's bound to guarantee some very bad family holidays in the future if anyone ever finds out. And their sister is up to shenanigans of her own, as is their mom, who remains reassuringly grotesque, but who still carries the capacity to surprise. The Foxman brothers must become men, though, God knows, they don't want to. They want to remain hard-punching, dope-smoking, lighthearted pranksters, but life won't stand for that. Forgiveness, compassion and compromise are all in the cards for them now that their dad has died. This is a beautiful novel about men -- their lust and rage and sweetness. Read it -- or take it as a gift -- when you next go on a dreaded family holiday.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Touching, Funny, Sad--a SIX star book!
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.

Entertaining, Yes...But Breakout? No.
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...

This Is Where You Got Me
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 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.