This is Where I Leave You by Jonathon Tropper

Jonathan Tropper writes compulsively readable, laugh-out-loud funny novels - if you enjoy dark humor....which I do! Judd Foxman is oscillating between a sea of self-pity and a "snake pit of fury and resentment" in the aftermath of the explosion of his marriage, which ended "the way these things do: with paramedics and cheesecake." Foxman is jobless (after finding his wife in bed with his boss) and renting out the basement of a "crappy house" when he is called home to sit shiva for his father--who, incidentally, was an atheist. This of course means seven days in his parent's house with his exquisitely dysfunctional family, including his mom, a sexy, "I've-still-got-it" shrink fond of making horrifying TMI statements; his older sister, Wendy, and her distracted hubby and three kids; his snarky older brother, Paul, and his wife; and his youngest brother, Phillip, the "Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead."

Tropper is wickedly funny, a master of the cutting one-liner that makes you both cringe and crack up. But what elevates his novels and makes him a truly splendid writer is his ability to create fantastically flawed, real characters who stay with you long after the book is over. Simultaneously hilarious, hopeful and uncomfortably honest, This Is Where I Leave You is as much about a family's reckoning as it is about one man's attempt to get it together. If you have a warped sense of humor, the affectionate, warts-and-all portrayal of the Foxmans will have fans wishing for a sequel.

Rating: 4.5 Recommend