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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Tropper, J. 2007 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Tropper, J. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | Tropper, J. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
The acclaimed author of The Book of Joe and Everything Changes tackles love, lust, and loss in the suburbs, in a stunning novel that is by turns heartfelt and riotously funny.
Author Notes
Jonathan Tropper is the author of How to Talk to a Widower, Everything Changes, The Book of Joe, Plan B, and One Last Thing Before I Go. He adapted his novel, This Is Where I Leave You, into a feature film starring Jason Bateman and Tina Fey. He is an executive producer and co-creator of the Cinemax series Banshee. He teaches writing at Manhattanville College.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A portrait of a modern guy in crisis, Tropper's third novel (Everything Changes; The Book of Joe) follows Doug Parker, whose life is frozen into place at 29 when Hailey, his wife of two years, is killed in a plane crash. Unable to leave the tony suburban house they once shared, he spends his days reliving their brief marriage from the moment he found her sobbing in his office over troubles with her first husband. At the same time, Doug's magazine column about grieving for his wife has made him irresistible to the media (book deals, television spots and the like are proffered) and to a wide array of women who find him "slim, sad and beautiful." Though stepson Russ is getting in trouble at school and Doug's pregnant twin sister, Claire, moves in, no amount of crying to strippers can keep Doug from the temptations of his best friend's wife or Russ's guidance counselor. Alternately flippant and sad, Tropper's book is a smart comedy of inappropriate behavior at an inopportune time. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Bereft hipster stuck in suburbia struggles to rejoin the world of the living after losing his wife in a plane crash. In a full-on retreat from human contact, 29-year-old Doug Parker passes the year following the death of his wife of two years in a numb Jack Daniel's-fueled haze. An anomaly in the upper-middle-class town of New Radford, the freelance writer only moved there to be with Hailey, a divorcee ten years his senior. Doug copes with the loss through his popular monthly "How to Talk to a Widower" magazine column, while fending off the advances of the local womenfolk, who yearn to ease his pain. Both hyper-aware of his unique situation, yet filled with self-loathing, he struggles mightily with the realization that his career success, comfortable home and affluence (via a fat airline settlement) all stem from Hailey's death. He also has to deal with conflicted feelings for Hailey's son Russ, a sensitive but troubled teenager who is in worse shape than Doug. Feeling unwelcome in the home of his womanizing dad, Jim, Russ dabbles in drugs and gets into fights. He needs a stable male figure in his life--a role Doug hardly feels qualified to take on. Meanwhile, Doug's bossy twin sister Claire suddenly moves in with him after her marriage falters, taking it upon herself to get her brother dating again, demanding that he begin to say "yes" to life. Doug goes out on a series of comically unsuccessful dates, while flirting with Russ's foxy guidance counselor Brooke. He also succumbs to the hottest of his desperate housewives, Laney Potter, setting off a chain of events culminating at the wedding of his baby sister Debbie, a brittle overachiever. With strong, impossibly beautiful female characters and naughty, unworthy men, Tropper's latest (Everything Changes, 2005, etc.) is a resigned yet hopeful examination of grief with a side of human absurdity. Warm and modestly knowing, with a wisecracking slacker hero. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Mixing pathos and comedy in equal measure, Tropper (Everything Changes, 2005) tells the story of 'slim, sad, and beautiful" Doug Parker. A year after his wife Hailey's death in a plane crash, 29-year-old widower Doug is still grieving heavily and has abandoned all pretense at civility and discretion. When people ask him how he's doing, he makes the mistake of actually telling them the truth, which inevitably includes a catalog of his antidepressant medications and his ongoing nightmares. Yet people keep making demands on him: his sweet, emotionally bereft stepson wants Doug to adopt him; Doug's twin sister, Claire, wants to set him up on a series of blind dates; and his agent is pressuring him to write a book as a spin-off of his wildly popular magazine column on mourning, but Doug refuses to become the 'poster boy for young widowers." With superb comic timing, Tropper keeps the sappiness at bay by juxtaposing tender scenes that often feature Doug's reminiscences about meeting and marrying his wife with very funny, often vitriolic dialogue.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2007 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Doug Parker is having a bad year. After the death of his wife in a plane crash, the 29-year-old freelance magazine writer withdraws from family and friends and rarely leaves the home he shared with his wife and stepson in the New Radford suburb of New York. There, he medicates with alcohol, produces a much-lauded monthly column about his grief, and wages war on a band of insurgent neighborhood rabbits. With his life in shambles and the specter of his dead wife haunting every waking thought, Doug struggles to hold off the world-his dysfunctional family, a nagging agent hoping to cash in on the success of his magazine column, and his troubled teenage stepson in need of a surrogate father figure-while he navigates an un-familiar landscape of pain and hopelessness. Eric Ruben's sometimes uneven reading captures well the jarring moments when Doug's seemingly impenetrable self-absorption is pierced by genuine compassion for and understanding of those around him-most notably his stroke--afflicted father, his domineering mother, and his two sisters-all of whom conspire at different moments to draw him out of his paralyzing grief. Ruben also deftly handles Doug's sexual misadventures with the right combination of passion, humor, and despair, as the wounded and irresistible widower agonizes over his longing for his dead wife and his growing need for companionship and love. Recommended for all general fiction collections.-Philip Bader, Pasadena, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.