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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
I may become a Tropper fan yet. Great read during the busy school year -- short, dialogue-driven chapters and quite funny. For awhile there, I was worried there was going to be a happily-ever-after, but the ending was ambiguous enough to satisfy me. If you like black-comedy dripping with snarkiness, this one's for you.
I’ve only read one other work by Tropper, [b:This Is Where I Leave You|6224935|This Is Where I Leave You|Jonathan Tropper|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336344327s/6224935.jpg|6405647], and so far I’ve got to say that I love Tropper’s style of writing – very real and effortless. His story lines are honest and relatable. And he always manages to infuse a bit of humor into every situation. I am definitely looking forward to reading more of his work.
As a long time Tropper reader, I appreciated the growth in "One Last Thing Before I Go." For the first time, the main character wasn't a rakish man child returning home to a family/town that no longer had faith in him. Instead, the main character is, quite simply, a loser.
Drew Silver has gone from a married father with a promising music career with a hit song to allowing his life to devolve into a divorced absentee father hitting up the local spank bank for cash in between stints playing weddings so he can pay the rent for his apartment at the depressing Versailles complex, home of dozens of similar sad sacks. The action begins when his 18-year-old valedictorian daughter comes over to tell him she's pregnant. When he asks why she's telling him, she bluntly says she isn't concerned about disappointing him.
Of course, that depressing tone doesn't pervade the rest of the book, even if Silver soon finds out - talk about a double whammy - that he has a heart condition that will kill him if he doesn't have an operation. The question becomes does he want to have the operation? He finds himself starting to connect a bit with Casey after half a decade of their relationship circling the drain. He starts to feel, in that cliched way, a bit more alive when facing death.
What I liked about "One Last Thing Before I Go":
1. Jonathan Tropper's voice. I've been a fan since his first novel, and I find him to be an easy fun voice to follow. He's an American Nick Hornby - though I'm finding I'm enjoying Tropper's latest works much more than Hornby's.
2. For the first time that I can recall, he doesn't write this in first person. For the first time, we get to hear the thoughts of those around the protagonist - Casey and her mother Denise get several interludes. It's not always perfect, but it was a surprising change.
3. Tropper writes better than most about friendship - specifically male friendship - and about the complexities of sex in modern society.
What I didn't like:
1. I'm so tired of books ending on ambiguous notes. Too many novels lately end where you just have to decide what happened. Come on already.
2. In the end, I didn't really LIKE Silver. I don't have to like main characters all the time, but there are some books where it definitely helps. I should have liked him more, but I didn't.
3. I held this up against some of Tropper's other works, and it just never entertained and impressed me the way "Plan B" and "This is Where I Leave You" did.
In the end? Three stars. I liked it well enough. I'm happy to have had it to read. Not something I want to put in other people's hands like his previous books.
Drew Silver has gone from a married father with a promising music career with a hit song to allowing his life to devolve into a divorced absentee father hitting up the local spank bank for cash in between stints playing weddings so he can pay the rent for his apartment at the depressing Versailles complex, home of dozens of similar sad sacks. The action begins when his 18-year-old valedictorian daughter comes over to tell him she's pregnant. When he asks why she's telling him, she bluntly says she isn't concerned about disappointing him.
Of course, that depressing tone doesn't pervade the rest of the book, even if Silver soon finds out - talk about a double whammy - that he has a heart condition that will kill him if he doesn't have an operation. The question becomes does he want to have the operation? He finds himself starting to connect a bit with Casey after half a decade of their relationship circling the drain. He starts to feel, in that cliched way, a bit more alive when facing death.
What I liked about "One Last Thing Before I Go":
1. Jonathan Tropper's voice. I've been a fan since his first novel, and I find him to be an easy fun voice to follow. He's an American Nick Hornby - though I'm finding I'm enjoying Tropper's latest works much more than Hornby's.
2. For the first time that I can recall, he doesn't write this in first person. For the first time, we get to hear the thoughts of those around the protagonist - Casey and her mother Denise get several interludes. It's not always perfect, but it was a surprising change.
3. Tropper writes better than most about friendship - specifically male friendship - and about the complexities of sex in modern society.
What I didn't like:
1. I'm so tired of books ending on ambiguous notes. Too many novels lately end where you just have to decide what happened. Come on already.
2. In the end, I didn't really LIKE Silver. I don't have to like main characters all the time, but there are some books where it definitely helps. I should have liked him more, but I didn't.
3. I held this up against some of Tropper's other works, and it just never entertained and impressed me the way "Plan B" and "This is Where I Leave You" did.
In the end? Three stars. I liked it well enough. I'm happy to have had it to read. Not something I want to put in other people's hands like his previous books.
I'm not sure about the ending, but the rest was entertaining and honest.
I decided to pick this book up after LOVING This is Where I Leave You when I read it a few years ago. I had never read anything else by Tropper, though I have always thought about it.
I found this story to be a similar tale of a very dysfunctional, but not too dysfunctional family that feels very relatable to something that you might see or hear about in real life. What he does best is character development, and it almost feels more like you're watching the story unfold rather than reading about it.
Overall, I did find it to be a little slow (but real life often is slow) and not quite as interesting as I hoped it would be.
It does have an ambiguous ending, which always drives me crazy, as I wish I got a little more closure with the way that things went with all of the different characters.
It was a good read, probably not something I would read a second time, but I enjoyed it overall.
I found this story to be a similar tale of a very dysfunctional, but not too dysfunctional family that feels very relatable to something that you might see or hear about in real life. What he does best is character development, and it almost feels more like you're watching the story unfold rather than reading about it.
Overall, I did find it to be a little slow (but real life often is slow) and not quite as interesting as I hoped it would be.
It does have an ambiguous ending, which always drives me crazy, as I wish I got a little more closure with the way that things went with all of the different characters.
It was a good read, probably not something I would read a second time, but I enjoyed it overall.
Amusing and occasionally affecting, but lesser Tropper, hitting all the same themes in his books, but less effectively. Delayed adolescent protagonist, Jewish family with a range of belief, siblings / children both troubled and more successful than the protagonist, conflicted parenting, and so on. A pleasant read, but not distinctive.
I just couldn't get through this book. Three library renewals later, I had to skim the last 200 pages...
One Last Thing Before I Go is a hilarious and bittersweet look into the life of a forty-something loser whose selfishness has torn his life and family apart. When Drew Silver (herein known as "Silver" because no one refers to him as "Drew") learns he has a potentially fatal heart ailment, his decision to forgo surgery and simply die sets off a chain reaction of events that threatens to monkey-wrench the lives his ex-wife and their daughter have created for themselves during his "lost" period. Oh, and to make matter worse, his daughter learns she's pregnant, and she comes to him (HIM!) for advice!
Silver is exactly the kind of man every man has the dangerous capability of becoming, a sad, depressed man looking back at all the mistakes he's made, knowing full well he could have turned left when he turned right, etc. Yet Silver is that lovable loser; you know deep down inside he really is a damaged soul needing to be loved, and wanting to love, but he can't help but fuck things up. So much so that he imagines his tombstone will be inscribed with the words "What the Fuck?"
Jonathan Tropper's latest is often times brutally funny and refreshingly honest. The characters, especially Silver and, most impressively, his 18-year-old daughter Casey, come to life with stunning clarity. I read this in a 3-day frenzy, not wanting this story to end. Alas, it did, and it left me both smiling and sad. Highly recommended.
Silver is exactly the kind of man every man has the dangerous capability of becoming, a sad, depressed man looking back at all the mistakes he's made, knowing full well he could have turned left when he turned right, etc. Yet Silver is that lovable loser; you know deep down inside he really is a damaged soul needing to be loved, and wanting to love, but he can't help but fuck things up. So much so that he imagines his tombstone will be inscribed with the words "What the Fuck?"
Jonathan Tropper's latest is often times brutally funny and refreshingly honest. The characters, especially Silver and, most impressively, his 18-year-old daughter Casey, come to life with stunning clarity. I read this in a 3-day frenzy, not wanting this story to end. Alas, it did, and it left me both smiling and sad. Highly recommended.
While there were laugh out loud moments it couldn't escape from the overwhelming dread and sense of hopelessness, which I guess was the point?