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Whatever, Tropper. I'll give you this much - you did deviate in your usual style by writing in third person, and your character was not your usual 'loser but in a charming way' since this guy was just a loser, and while you still objectified women a'plenty you at least threw in the condescending 'woman that he was into was NOT the hottest bridesmaid, she wasn't even second, she came in third (this is almost a direct quote) so don't you now think I am enlightened for being willing to settle??'......
3.5 stars rounded up to four. I received an ARC of this from a Dutton giveaway on Twitter. I'm generally not into books that explore the male psyche, but Jonathan Tropper's latest offers a solid story, well-drawn characters, and some great dialogue. Indeed, the dialogue is where the book really shines, and I could easily see "One Last Thing Before I Go" being made into a movie. My favorite parts were Silver's exchanges and interludes with Jack and Oliver, which alternated beautifully between mom...
***3.5 Stars*** Always amusing...sometimes laugh out loud funny. As I listened, I imagined it as a great comedy series and I marveled at the author’s very clever wit.
When you just don't care whether the main character in a novel lives or dies, well, it's probably a good sign that you won't be recommending this book to others. I wasn't offended by the characters in One Last Thing; I was annoyed by them. Or perhaps even worse: I was bored by them. The protagonist, a divorced, middle-age man who was one the drummer in a one-hit-wonder band, openly admits to being a loser. That he spends much of the novel making declarations of loserdom without actually doing an...
Wow. I loved this book. Gobbled it up. I was at work yesterday, mourning the fact I couldn’t read it (no, librarians do not just sit around reading on the job), and even though I was queasy and should have just napped when I got home, I read and read and read until I was done. The ending, though not a “happy ending”, is satisfying. And the meat of the book is a meal of laugh-out-loud funniness and aching sadness, a savory blend that never has one element dominating the others. One reviewer has n...
I don't know Jonathan Tropper, or what his life has been like, but he sure does have the ability to provide pitch-perfect perspective into young (and not-so-young) men struggling with what they've made of their lives. His This is Where I Leave You was my favorite book of 2009, and I've enjoyed a number of his earlier books as well, because I love how he gives poignantly funny voice to these somewhat dysfunctional men as they try to get a handle on their past, present, and future.In his newest bo...
It may have been a mistake listening to two Jonathon Tropper books in a row. Perhaps had I listened to this one first, I may have liked it better. Maybe if I had read rather than listened to it? This one didn't work for me. It wasn't awful but it didn't have the insight, honesty, or hilarity I have to come to expect from this author. 2.5 stars, sadly.
Once upon a time, Drew Silver was living the dream--a member of a rock band with a hit single who went home each night to a wife he loved and a daughter he adored. Fast forward a couple of years and the band was a one-hit wonder, Drew and his wife are divorced and he's estranged from his daughter. Living in a by the week hotel with a lot of other divorced men, the highlights of Silver's week are college co-eds in bikinis coming to lay by the hotel pool and Silver heading to a local independent b...
I LOVED "This is Where I Leave You". I guess I expected this book to be on the same level of humor. I laughed out loud for that book. This book is funny, in a very tragic way. It starts off a little slow, but that could be because I had expectations. The middle to the end is fantastic. I love his friends, Jack and Oliver. It got very funny at the end. As I read this, I saw this as a very funny movie. I would have given it a 5 star rating, but the beginning was a bit cumbersome for me. Tropper is...
Silver is forty-four, a former drummer with the one-hit-wonder band, The Bent Daisies. After the front man/vocalist, Pat Mcreedy, left them and went solo, they tanked, dried up, and disbanded. Now Silver is a notch above broke, and his ex-wife, Denise is about to get married to the doctor who wants to perform life-saving surgery on him. But Silver is about the most passively suicidal guy you may meet in fiction.Silver lives on his royalty checks from the song, “Rest in Pieces,” or plays Bar Mitz...
***Cautionary Note: I do not consider any part of this review a "spoiler"; however, some folks may reject that viewpoint.It's that time of the year when Jews who remember that they're Jewish invest themselves in preparations for the approaching High Holidays. So when I finished reading Jonathan Tropper's One Last Thing Before I Go, I had no intention of using my time to compose a review of it. But at some point after planning to merely change its shelf and rate it through the star system, I real...
The dialogue was 5 stars for me and everything else was 3 stars. Definitely going to read more of his work!
An endearing tale of a sad schmuck who gets his life back on track. This novel reminded me a lot of Hope: A Tragedy and A Visit from the Goon Squad, two books that ask similar questions about what can be rescued from failure.The Versailles Hotel, last resort for divorced losers, is home to Drew Silver, the forty-five-year-old drummer from one-hit wonder Bent Daisies. Ogling college girls at the hotel pool with pals Jack and Oliver helps distract from the fact that his ex-wife, Denise, is prepari...
Quick read. And totally quintessential Tropper. You have your male lead surrounded by people/family that he is both loved and hated by. His inner monologue is funny and self-deprecating and completely recognizable as JT. So we have Silver, Drew Silver who is a middle aged guy who was once famous for a punk band back in the day. He had it all, kinda. A wife and and daughter and lost them both when his wife divorced him. We start the story almost 8 years after the divorce and we see Silver as he m...
This book was a disappointment for me. I thoroughly enjoyed “This Is Where I Leave You”. I was hoping to get the same type of witty, funny and heartwarming story in “One Last Thing Before I Go” but it just didn’t work out for me. I couldn’t identify with any of the characters and worse than that, I didn’t really like any of them. I found the story to be a mish-mosh of jumbled memories and random stories that didn’t quite gel for me.
Update-- This is a $1.99 Kindle special today! This author is so much fun but he hasn't written a book in quite a while. I'd love to see a new book come out by him. When I need a comic tragic very fun book I think of Jonathan Tropper. This book fits the bill. This was everything thing I wanted --'at the moment'!!! Jonathan Tropper is my 'go-to' author when I'm in the mood to read about Jewish families --their problems -and laugh my ass off! He's got some FABULOUS lines. I only wish I could remem...
One Last Thing Before I Go is the third of three novels by Jonathan Tropper which I read back-to-back, and I considered abandoning it shortly after I began reading. The story began with 44 year-old Drew Silver, divorced father of a 'soon-to-be' off to Princeton daughter named Casey, sitting around the pool with his friends. These friends are other middle-aged divorced fathers who sit around ogling young college-aged women who spend their days sunbathing. These men are all living at an establishm...
Maybe this book isn’t in the same category as his previous, but I’m a sucker for Jonathan Tropper’s writing style, his lovable losers seeking redemption and his messy families, so I’m going with another four stars. Come on, you have to love an author who can describe why men love talking about and smoking cigars in this way…’because of a tossed salad of latent Freudian inadequacy issues, middle-aged men will perform fellatio on a clump of cured leaves and somehow feel more like men because of it...
Divorced over a decade and a half ago, renting an apartment as do several other divorcees in the same complex; discarded his daughter and hs brother's family and one-time on the verge of becoming a rock star but now okaying in wedding bands Silver is diagnosed with an operable deadly condition but refuses to have the operation on the account that life will never get better! Silver set himself three task to do before he dies, to be a better man, to be a better father, and to fall in love!I had to...
Let me start by saying I soon loved and continued to love this book, but what a horrible beginning! The very first scene takes place at a sperm bank, where three divorced middle-aged guys are making donations. Funny? Stupid, more like it. And this is immediately followed by an overly long poolside scene where they are all leering at bikini-clad hardbellies. Though I’m sure the writer thought he was being incredibly funny, he misread this woman in the audience: I thought it was dumb, clichéd, and...