Back in 2009, I read Jonathan Tropper’s fifth novel This Is Where I Leave You. I enjoyed
that enough to go out and read his four previous novels. But as I read the last
one sometime in 2010, I realized that Tropper could be categorized under “Lad Lit,”
a sort derivative take on the popular female authors who get called “Chick Lit”
writers. Both, in a way, are insulting, yet both styles cover somewhat the same
ground, with dysfunctional families and main characters that have sitcom wit
when it comes to zingers.
This is not bad, because not every book you read (or I read)
has to have some literary weight behind them. After all, I love Stephen King
and most, if not all his novels, are considered pop-fiction. And only on
occasion, do I veer off into the literary fiction of say Michael Chabon (and
while I own a copy of highly acclaimed 2001 novel The Corrections, I’ve still yet to crack it open).
I do believe that This Is Where I Leave You to be his best comedic
book, so I was hoping that what he started in that novel would continue into One Last Thing Before I Go. While I
liked it, I found myself irritated by it as well. The main character, Drew
Silver (who apparently only goes by the name of Silver –even his family calls
him that. Who does this?) is so unappealing, so depressed and so irritating, I
cannot understand why anyone –even his own father, a rabbi, wants to spend time
with him.
The plot has Silver being a divorcee, a former
one-hit-wonder rock star, a bad father, a bad husband, a bad friend, yet
somehow makes everyone love him all the more. As if his life wasn’t complicated
and messed up enough, he develops a tear in his aorta that is life-threatening
unless surgically repaired. But Silver, being the life-long screw up that he
is, isn’t sure that he wants to have the surgery that will save his life. His
daughter, who is eighteen and off to Yale at the end of summer, gets pregnant
by the neighbors’ son. He is in love with a girl with whom he has never spoken
and who plays acoustic sets at the local bookstore café. The highlight of his
day is when he ogles college-aged girls lounging around the pool near his
apartment, The Versailles, a place where divorced men go to become fat and
depressed.
Part of my problem with the book, beyond the whole sitcom-ish
aspect where people have unbelievable banter, is I saw myself in Silver. Being
unemployed for a year sort of makes you look at life in a very depressive way,
and Silver (as in silver lining the tear offers) now has a choice, either to
continue on with his troubled life that seems not to be getting better, or let
nature take its course. Maybe if one is depressive, they should avoid this
book?
Tropper was working on a new drama for Cinemax called Banshee, and maybe trying to write a
book and launch a series divided his time too much. Somewhere during the
writing process of this book and getting a series commitment, the book fell
between his earliest work, because while it does have some moments, it nowhere
near where he landed with This Is Where
I Leave You.
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