Book Review: This is where I leave you
Katie Rose McEneely
Issue date: 11/12/09 Section: Arts
The Foxman children are fragmented, unhappy and brimming with resentment, a barely-functioning train minutes before its derailment. In This is Where I Leave You, Jonathan Tropper presents them in all of their uninhibited, cantankerous glory, as seen through the eyes of Judd, middle child and narrator. He, his sister Wendy and his brothers Paul and Phillip, have returned home for their father's funeral and its subsequent religious aftermath. It's the first time they've acted like a family in years.
Judd isn't in the right frame of mind to grieve for his father - he's dealing, badly, with the dissolution of his nine-year marriage, which is brought on by the revelation that his wife has been sleeping with his boss for the last year.
His siblings are involved in their own personal tragedies. Wendy is wry and exhausted, wrangling with three kids and a loveless marriage. Paul is an embittered ex-athlete struggling to manage the family business and help his wife conceive. And Phillip, the baby of the family, is trying to manage an adult relationship for the first time in his irresponsible life.
After the funeral, the Foxmans return to the house to sit shiva, a Jewish mourning ritual that requires the family of the deceased to come together for seven days. It's essentially a weeklong wake, complete with casserole dishes, visitation and all the usual problems that arise when estranged families spend more than fifteen minutes together. As Judd says, "there is no occasion calling for sincerity that the Foxman family won't quickly diminish or pervert through our own genetically engineered brand of irony and evasion."
With a plot as simple as this, Tropper's novel doesn't sound like the dark comedy it actually is; but as it turns out, This is Where I Leave You draws the bulk of its humor from its decidedly grim situation. Judd and his siblings badger and belittle one another, bringing up old grudges and revealing unpleasant truths. It's like a family dinner where no one is on their best behavior and everyone gets called out on anything they've screwed up in the past decade or so.
Judd isn't in the right frame of mind to grieve for his father - he's dealing, badly, with the dissolution of his nine-year marriage, which is brought on by the revelation that his wife has been sleeping with his boss for the last year.
His siblings are involved in their own personal tragedies. Wendy is wry and exhausted, wrangling with three kids and a loveless marriage. Paul is an embittered ex-athlete struggling to manage the family business and help his wife conceive. And Phillip, the baby of the family, is trying to manage an adult relationship for the first time in his irresponsible life.
After the funeral, the Foxmans return to the house to sit shiva, a Jewish mourning ritual that requires the family of the deceased to come together for seven days. It's essentially a weeklong wake, complete with casserole dishes, visitation and all the usual problems that arise when estranged families spend more than fifteen minutes together. As Judd says, "there is no occasion calling for sincerity that the Foxman family won't quickly diminish or pervert through our own genetically engineered brand of irony and evasion."
With a plot as simple as this, Tropper's novel doesn't sound like the dark comedy it actually is; but as it turns out, This is Where I Leave You draws the bulk of its humor from its decidedly grim situation. Judd and his siblings badger and belittle one another, bringing up old grudges and revealing unpleasant truths. It's like a family dinner where no one is on their best behavior and everyone gets called out on anything they've screwed up in the past decade or so.
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