The Best of the Backlist: Jonathan Tropper

The Book of Joe will appeal to anyone who grew up in a town they couldn’t wait to get out of, and also to those who see Bruce Springsteen song lyrics as symbolic of the angst of teenage boys growing up in the suburbs.  What happens if you hated where you grew up so much that after you left you managed to write a novel—quite thinly disguised—skewering everyone in the town?  (Even the good ones, like former girlfriends, your family, and others you should have fictionalized just a bit more...)  Joe Goffman had rather bad luck in high school, much of it brought on by his single-minded pursuit of hi (literally) jinks focusing on sex, drugs, avoiding homework, and dealing with his jock brother and the father from whom he is estranged.  That part isn’t unusual; writing about it may be.  He never figured he would get published, and he certainly overlooked the part where he might have to return to Bush Falls, CT, when his father becomes seriously ill.  He and his former friends, lovers, and enemies get to reconstruct their version of events, making Joe question not only his judgment in writing his book, but his memory of just how bad—or even how ordinarily bad—life in the ‘burbs really was.  This one is a must for anyone who grew up in the 80s and who finds that they can’t ever quite get away from home, no matter how far they travel.  Like Joe, it’s possible that you weren’t supposed to try too hard after all. 

In This is Where I Leave You Judd Foxman and his family sit Shiva for seven days after his father dies.  Seven days with an unlikeable California sister (with jerk husband, crappy kids); his ne’er-do-well younger brother who functions as both a chick magnet and the main trouble hound; a mom whose behavior becomes more and more hard to comprehend; various hangers-on with agendas ranging from pick-ups to revenge; and an older brother who stayed home to run the family business, a choice made due to some unforgiveable familial catastrophe involving Judd.  Brother’s wife—a former girlfriend of Judd’s—is the one to duck, as her prime goal is to get her cooking eggs fertilized, and she isn’t particular about which brother gets the job done.  Not present is Judd’s wife, the amazing Jen, who left Judd after he discovered her infidelity with a decidedly not-nice kind of guy.  Her absence keeps Judd keenly focused on every minor flaw in every relationship he has ever seen, and all the ones surrounding him during Shiva.  No one seems particularly happy; heck, no one seems even remotely functional.  As the story unfolds, however, Judd has more reason to examine why his life has become an emotional train wreck and to own up to his part.  By the end of the novel, everyone has had a chance to change their future to make it somehow less wretched.  For Judd,  too, the future could be unyoked from his past:  Jen is pregnant (oddly, by Judd), allowing a glimpse into a future where it is possible—just possible—that Judd will get something right this time.   

Like Nick Hornby and Tom Perotta, Tropper writes about some of our worst fears (deaths in family, miscarriages, step-children, existential angst, scary tumors, deadly hangovers, unrequited love, failure to measure up to parental expectations, infidelity, falling in love for the second time).  In each case, though, he shows that after the crisis, more than resolution is possible.  He writes with biting humor about people you know—you just cringe sometimes when you think about what they are doing.  But you always root for them, every time.