A brief review of a terrific novel:
Meet the Foxmans. I can’t help thinking of the Flintstones’ tune, while humming, “Foxmans, Meet The Foxmans…” Can you hear it?
If you’ve read this book, you’ll understand why you have to meet them. There are bits and pieces of each of us - in each of them. Tropper’s all-star dysfunctional cast is as honest and hilarious as they come. And if you read this book, you’ll have spent a week together with this troupe, mourning the death of the patriarch as the family is “forced” to sit shiva for seven days.
Judd Foxman is our lonely, recently cuckolded, sensitive narrator. He delivers keen insights into maleness, from the teenage years straight into adulthood. His fantasies about women he passes on the street are both heart-wrenchingly funny and achingly sad. Just like everything else in this book.
His brothers and one sister each have their own tales of woe and joy. And Judd's unforgettable mother, the famous child-rearing author, has little-to-no filter as to what is appropriate dinner conversation, adding just the right dose of humor to the most uncomfortable situations.
There’s a passage in THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU, narrated by Judd, that sums up the dysfunction and captures his pain in a somehow lighthearted manner:
“I’m mourning my father and having sex with my sister-in-law and falling in love with strangers on the way to see the wife who slept with my boss and is now simultaneously divorcing me and having my baby. I feel like the driver who spends that extra second fussing with his cell phone and looks up just in time to see the front of his car crash through the guardrail and drive off the cliff.”
Meet the Foxmans. I can’t help thinking of the Flintstones’ tune, while humming, “Foxmans, Meet The Foxmans…” Can you hear it?
If you’ve read this book, you’ll understand why you have to meet them. There are bits and pieces of each of us - in each of them. Tropper’s all-star dysfunctional cast is as honest and hilarious as they come. And if you read this book, you’ll have spent a week together with this troupe, mourning the death of the patriarch as the family is “forced” to sit shiva for seven days.
Judd Foxman is our lonely, recently cuckolded, sensitive narrator. He delivers keen insights into maleness, from the teenage years straight into adulthood. His fantasies about women he passes on the street are both heart-wrenchingly funny and achingly sad. Just like everything else in this book.
His brothers and one sister each have their own tales of woe and joy. And Judd's unforgettable mother, the famous child-rearing author, has little-to-no filter as to what is appropriate dinner conversation, adding just the right dose of humor to the most uncomfortable situations.
There’s a passage in THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU, narrated by Judd, that sums up the dysfunction and captures his pain in a somehow lighthearted manner:
“I’m mourning my father and having sex with my sister-in-law and falling in love with strangers on the way to see the wife who slept with my boss and is now simultaneously divorcing me and having my baby. I feel like the driver who spends that extra second fussing with his cell phone and looks up just in time to see the front of his car crash through the guardrail and drive off the cliff.”
Comments