This is Where I Leave You

This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

This is Where I Leave You is smart and funny. Laugh out loud funny. More importantly, it captures the realities of family life. Most of the trials and tribulations faced by the Foxman family are familiar to all families in the United States, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, wealth, and every other thing that divides us so. In these ways, this was one of the more brilliant novels I’ve read in the past few years.

This is Where I Leave You is told in first person from the perspective of Judd, a thirty-something Jewish man living in a rented basement room because his house is occupied by his wife and his boss. Theirs is an affair he discovered when he came home from work early one day. It’s a familiar cliché, but Jonathan Tropper does it in an original and unforgettable manner. In the novel’s opening sentence, we learn that Judd’s father has died. Judd learns that his father’s dying wish was to have his family sit shiva, so Judd joins his mother, sister, and two brothers—whom he can only stand to varying degrees of not very much—for a week of togetherness. This togetherness does not exactly drive the plot, but it is what This is Where I Leave You is about.

Tropper’s imagery is superb. His character development is even better. From Judd to his sister’s six-year old son to his wife’s new beau, each character is distinct; each has his/her own path we can follow. They are all whole people. And they all fit, even when they don’t. The novel’s greatest strength is that nothing feels pasted on.

I didn’t love it, though. It was too judgmental for my liking. A lot of that is Judd the character speaking, but there are some instances where it came across to me as the author’s feelings on the world. There was too much fat-hate for my taste. And I’m left wondering if the woman issues are just Judd’s or the author’s. As brilliantly written This is Where I Leave You was, it is entirely possible that my projections were wrong. I will definitely read Tropper again, so I will find out.

In a world of suffering we have two extremes: the boot strappers and the woe-is-me-ers. I don’t particularly like either. Judd is a wo-is-me-er, and I found it difficult to empathize with him. He was never good enough, never attractive enough, never physical enough. He was never able to get the beautiful girl—and when he did, she had a physical defect. He feels sorry for himself. He spends much of the novel in a pseudo-midlife crisis, even though he’s about fifteen years too early for it. he can’t just want a woman or love a woman; he has to save a woman. “I could never resist a crying girl,” he says. “I don’t know what that says about me, but it’s probably not something good.” Later he recognizes, “I want someone who will love me and touch me and understand me and let me take care of them, but beyond that, I don’t know.” Judd is the kind of man who laments that the beautiful women who want nice guys never look at him. He’s the guy who wants what he thinks he can’t have while never realizing that he could have and would have had it had he ever put out any effort. Instead he makes up ways in which he’s better than this person or that; he cannot uplift his own self-worth, so he puts down everyone else’s. Judd feels like the world owes him something, yet he’s never manned up to what he needs to do for his own life. Even his successes in this story turn out to just be moments of resignation or weakness in others. In short, I found it hard to empathize with him. This book doesn’t work as well as it’s supposed to if you don’t at least like Judd. I didn’t…at all.

There was too much I didn’t like to rate it very high, but it was too smart, too funny, too beautifully written, and too likely to be reread to rate low.

B