Secure A Copy One Last Thing Before I Go Formulated By Jonathan Tropper In Paper Copy

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 middleaged 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 bikiniclad hardbellies.
Though Im sure the writer thought he was being incredibly funny, he misread this woman in the audience: I thought it was dumb, clichéd, and uninteresting.
I thought for sure this was one of those Penis In Your Face books, existing solely because of the need for some male writers to expose themselves in public.
But I was so wrong, because after these first two annoying scenes, the book redeems itself in spades, and it turns into a terrific read.
Both the plot and characters are rich and irresistible, The language is luscious. I soon became hooked.

The story is about a loser named Silver, whose missteps lead to death around the corner.
Hes a hasbeen, onehitwonder rock star who lives in a hotel mostly populated by sad divorced men in the same boat.
He hangs around with other losers, all passive divorced men who seem to accept that their lives are meaningless and screwed up, that they are getting what they deserve because theyve been so stupid.
Theyve all pretty much given up,

With lots of comedy and tragedy, Silver becomes entangled with his smart, estranged, and pregnant teenaged daughter his sane and attractive exwife and her successful fiancéwho also happens to be the doctor trying to save his life.
Silver continually makes bad decisions, and there are many comic and poignant moments along the way funny scenes where you will laugh out loud.
I ended up loving the guy and rooting for him even though I was absolutely sure at the beginning that I would hate him through and through forever yes, the sperm bank and poolside scenes had really done a job on my head.


It turned out that the book is so well written and riveting that I didnt want to put it down, and I would find myself rereading sections just because they made me happy.
Lots of highlights, lots of food for thought,

My only major complaint was that I didnt like the ending it was very unsatisfying.
Despite this, Tropper is one of my new favorite writers and Im diving into one of his earlier books, “This Is Where I Leave You,” asap.
Ill give “One Last Thing Before I Go” a,it would have gotten aif the firstor so pages hadnt made me so mad and the ending had been better.
Highly recommend. 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 onetime 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 he feels that he has nothing more to look forward to! 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 take this all with a pinch of salt, as although it's a top drawer, pretty funny and interesting witty/dark comedy that shines a light on the weakness of men and how those around them have to manage/mother them to get the best out of the looks at how young people move to managing their parents at male friendship and to a lesser degree how we look at mortality, it is ultimately set in a world of American privilege and the whole idea that Silver is lonely and a deadbeat loser, whilst having two great friends, having an apparently OK paying job, living in an apartment complex with a communal swimming pool and hot tub and still on speaking terms with his Ex, doesn't really sit right.
On the other hand this would make an extremely entertaining and uplifting Hollywood drama, . . a drama of a book so good, that even with the glaring inconsistency of the core foundation of Silver's story, I still have to Four Starout ofit!

readread Maybe this book isnt in the same category as his previous, but Im a sucker for Jonathan Troppers writing style, his lovable losers seeking redemption and his messy families, so Im going with another four.
Come on, you have to love an author who can describe why men love talking about and smoking cigars in this waybecause of a tossed salad of latent Freudian inadequacy issues, middleaged men will perform fellatio on a clump of cured leaves and somehow feel more like men because of it, which, if nothing else, is a colossal triumph of marketing.
And you would think that, phallic or not, a habit that involves plugging your mouth would be a quieter affair, but you would be wrong.
Tell me that isnt inspired writing,

While at times the story may have meandered, it was always engaging and emotionally layered.
The characters, while not always likable, are quirky and realistic, And the writing, as always, hilarious, insightful and often wistful, This is my favorite kind of writing, dialoguerich, tight, paced and eminently quotable, Tropper has an uncanny ability to combine glib and regretful and produce material that makes you weep while you are laughing.
I love how this author imbues his work with wit and heartI will pick up one of his books for the dialogue aloneand always eagerly await his next.

The dialogue wasfor me and everything else wasstars, Definitely going to read more of his work! Wreed graag gelezen, Het voelde als het goeie boek op het goeie moment voor mij, met een hele hoop zinnen die me deden nadenken en vol hilarische én hilarisch pijnlijke dialogen en inzichten over het leven.
Donkerder dan This is Where I Leave You, soms zelfs deprimerend donker, maar hé, het leven is soms gewoon wat donker.
Het leest alleszins opnieuw als een film en de personages zijn zo geloofwaardig dat je ze eens zou willen vastpakken en vertellen dat het allemaal wel goed komt, hoe uitzichtloos alles ook lijkt.


“I keep waiting for the universe to decide things for me, and the thing is, the universe has better things to do.
”

“The only thing worse than not having your dream come true is having it come true for a little while.
”

“There are some people out there who don't wait for what come next, They decide what should come next and they go and make it happen, ” Yeah, so Im pretty much completely enamored with Jonathan Tropper, I read This is Where I Leave You and was smitten immediately followed by the fear that he might be a onehit wonder.
Thankfully, that turned out not to be the case and now Im headoverheels in love with his writing.
He writes good people or more accurately, he writes people well because they aren't always "good" and lots of them.
People I want to know in real life, People I can picture vividly while reading their stories, People I want to call up six months from now to check on and see how they are doing.


Silver is an aging former rock star whose one constant in life is failure, Failed rock career, failed marriage, failed parenting, etc, On the cusp of his exwifes impending nuptials, his teenage daughter confides in him that she is pregnant and Silver discovers he has a medical condition that may kill him.
The story that follows is a couple of unforgettable weeks with a ragtag ensemble cast that wont soon be forgotten.
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 realized that the High Holidays are actually THE reason for me to write a response to the novel, not an excuse to skip reviewing it.


If preparing for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur means more than shopping, cooking, vacuuming, and searching closets for appropriate clothing that still fits, then the preparation means examining what has and hasn't been done to repair damage and clarifying what's required to create a hopedfor future.
This period is, in essence, a time to clean up, not merely one's house, but one's life.


Tropper's characters whatever their revealed and concealed shortcomings are all sympathetic figures, including the central character, Drew Silver, who resists believing that he CAN make his being in this world better than his leaving it.
He has SCREWED UP and, consequently, injured others, So why not simply allow a fixable heart problem to end his rotten life Why indeed aside from a survival instinct do any of us "keep on keepin' on" when we're aware of our flaws, limitations, and the very high probability that they'll remain with us and/or new ones will show up Hope Hope that like Silver's heart the broken, the defective, the incorrect, etc.
can be improved or made right,

Jews read in their prayerbooks, as the Day of Atonement is ending, that the gates are closing.
Will one live or die in the coming year Who among us knows But as Tropper's novel clearly emphasizes, what we can know is that, consciously or unconsciously, each of us is always choosing between living and not living.
Although the words in Yom Kippur services remind us that time is passing and life's end can be as soon as this year, the Jewish religion promotes the belief that, while we're alive, the gates remain open.
A person CAN become committed to forgiving him/herself, to asking for forgiveness from those she's wronged, to making restitution, to not repeating mistakes and to choosing life.
Will Drew Silver Will we Each year, as if the gates were closing, Jews are expected to have an affirmative answer.


Conflicted characters, whose conversations keep a reader's attention touching relationships an engaging story, and careful treatment of matters of import make One More Thing Before I Go another fivestar Tropper novel.
The work offers answers to certain questions but, fittingly, not all, A closing gate is an open gate, sitelinkOne Last Thing Before I Go is the third of three novels by Jonathan Tropper which I read backtoback, and I considered abandoning it shortly after I began reading.
The story began withyearold Drew Silver, divorced father of a 'soontobe' off to Princeton daughter named Casey, sitting around the pool with his friends.
These friends are other middleaged divorced fathers who sit around ogling young collegeaged women who spend their days sunbathing.
These men are all living at an establishment known as the Versailles, an efficiency hotel near the interstate and all spend their days complaining about their exwives and lamenting the fact that they don't spend enough time with their children.
This story about middleaged men in the throes of a very pitiful, depressing and stereotypical midlife crisis sounded way too much like people I know in my real life.
I thought I might just pass on this one,

I'm not sure WHY I continued to read, I suppose part of it was that I had read Jonathan Tropper's novels and I couldn't accept that this cliche he seemed to be presenting could be the entirety of the story.
The other reason I kept reading was that despite the fact that Drew Silver 'Silver' was pathetic, I was privy to his thoughts and feelings underneath his longings for his 'glory days', that is, his time in a onehitwonder rock band called the Bent Daisies, he appeared to be thoughtful and confused and there was such a sorrowful quality about him that I.
. well, I wanted to know more,

It was clear from the outset that although Silver was hanging out with the men from the Versailles, who generally didn't seem to go in much for introspection, that he was different in some way.
Sure, he was ogling the young women along with his friends but he also was caught up in thinking that it was finally clear to him that his life was not going to turn out the way he had expected it to or planned.
He was thinking. "Mistakes have been made. It's hard to know where to start, Things have been a mess for so many years that trying to pin down a starting point is like trying to figure out where your skin starts.
All you can ever really know is that it's wrapped around you, sometimes a little tighter than you'd like.
"

Just as Silver was attempting to piece together what was wrong with his life, he was facing a new, unexpected challenge.
He was visited by his daughter Casey and he realized that the new challenge he was presented with just might give him some clarity.
The truth about his relationship with Casey was that he hadn't had much of a relationship with her since he and her mother, Denise had divorced.
. "it will surprise no one to learn that he has not been anyone's idea of a model father.
. His relationship with Casey gradually evolved from playful to strained to distant and once puberty had had its way with her, her once habitual forgiveness became somewhat more elusive.
" And just then, this brilliant young woman who was on her way to Princeton was standing in front of him telling him she was pregnant and she made it clear that she was telling him before anyone else because it didn't matter to her WHAT he thought of her.


Even though Silver was hurt that Casey was sharing her dilemma with him only because his opinion of her didn't matter to her, he felt that maybe he had a chance to finally be the father he should have been all along and always wanted to be.
The two hatched a plan for Silver to accompany Casey to a women's clinic to figure out her options

but on the way there, fate had other plans for Silver.
he suddenly became extremely ill and lost consciousness, When he became conscious again, he found himself in the hospital, being told that he had a tear in the inner wall of his aorta and he had had a ministroke.
He needed surgery right away but whether out of sheer stubbornness or just a deep feeling of not having any idea why his life should continue, Silver decided he would not have the surgery.
Instead, he wanted to try to be the person he should have been all along in the time remaining to him.
To guide him, he made a 'to do' list:
, Be a better father.
. Be a better man.
. Fall in love.
. Die.

This novel was about so many things, What initially seemed like a frivolous but yes, somewhat funny look at middleaged men having a midlife crisis turned into so much more.
For me, this book became one of those unexpected surprises, . a book that I hadn't known I was looking for but turned into something that spoke to me on a very personal level.


Although the novel is about Silver's existential crisis and his need to make peace not only with himself but his daughter Casey, his exwife Denise and his parents, the relationship that I identified with so profoundly was his relationship with Casey.
Throughout the book, Silver endured much painful introspection and difficult but honest conversation with Casey in order to finally realize "It would have been so easy.
. to do things like take her on drives, to the beach, to a movie, Anything. It's not like he was busy traveling the world, He was right here, and nowhere to be found, "

Only through the magic of a welltold story could it happen that I became Casey and she became me.
I also have been a fatherless daughter, from about the age ofand only in my daydreams and imagination could this scenario play out.
. as it did between Silver and Casey, I will never have the opportunity for such honest conversations my father passed away years ago, But this beautiful, poignant story of a daughter and the father who failed her but sought to be someone she could rely on found that place in me that I keep hidden and filled me with hope because well, a girl's gotta have dreams, doesn't she


Note: There are spoilers contained in the comments following this review.
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