All families have issues. And every family's issues are unique, intimate, and personal. In This is Where I Leave You, Jonathan Tropper airs the dirty laundry of the Foxman family for all the world to read. Lucky for the Foxmans their not real, and can't feel the vulnerabiltiy that would come with this amount of airing. This family, Jewish more by tradition than practice, is asked to sit shiva (a seven-day mourning period that basically consists of the family sitting together in the house, meditating and honoring the dead) by their here-to-fore un-religious father. The story is told by Judd Foxman, one of the four siblings who have lost touch with their parents, and each other, and have a lot of pent up passive aggression that is released in the tension of even the first hour of their shiva. The story is the story of a family that is placed in a situation where all of the tension, blame, subtle hatred and jealous of lifetimes are in open season, because in all reality, they have nothing else to talk about trapped in their home for seven days fulfilling a duty in a religion that none of them truly believed in anymore. It is also a story of Judd's coming-to-terms with his own failing marriage and unemployment. (His wife cheated on him with his boss--so now he's down a wife and a job.) Through his eyes, the reader can analyze the situation with the necessary background knowledge of a sibling, knowing all of the childhood issues that caused each sibling their own unique psychological issues. We can also watch Judd face his own problems and sort them out in relation to the others' and their collective situation. I've just begun reading this novel, and already I love Tropper's style of prose, his underlying humor in the face of tragedy, and the honesty with which he presents all of the different issues facing the Foxmans at the same time. He is one of those authors who use off-color, or at the very least unusual analogies and descriptions of emotions, that no one would ever think about, but make perfect sense in the given situation. In describing the moment when Judd finds his wife in bed with another man, the minute details and at the same time simplicity with which he describes the scene seem strange until you try to imagine standing there as he did. And the entire picture comes together and the reality and the emotion of the words become so true that you feel as though you were standing in the doorway, too. I can't wait to see how the rest of the week plays out between the siblings, their mother, and the neighborhood mourners who come to pay their respects. Tropper has several other novels which I will be on the lookout for in future. Verdict: this is yet another excellent random find at Barnes & Noble!
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Carrie:-2010 Westminster College grad Archives
January 2015
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