This Is Where I Leave You

Content Warning: This novel and review contain references to death and sexual content.

Jonathan Tropper’s 2009 novel was hailed as an insightful and realistic portrayal of an American man confronting the challenges and heartbreaks of adulthood. The tensions, resentments, and moments of absurdity erupting among the Foxman family as they sit shiva (a Jewish mourning custom) offer a wry and honest look at bereavement in many forms, handled with a balance of ironic distance and incisive narrative commentary.

The conflicts verge on the melodramatic as the week witnesses everything from infidelity to infertility. On top of that, Judd’s cheating wife announces she is pregnant, while he cautiously dates his high school crush. The close quarters, combative personalities, and erupting truths all lead to heartfelt if unsentimental meditations on passion, grief, and guilt.

Judd Foxman’s life is a mess. Right after he learns that his father has died of cancer, his ex-wife, Jen, who had an affair with Judd’s boss, Wade, announces she is pregnant with Judd’s child. When his mother, Hilary—a sex-positive child psychologist who enjoyed writing about her children more than raising them—insists the family sit shiva, old disappointments and resentments boil to the surface, along with fresh betrayals.

Paul, the oldest son, resents that he sacrificed his baseball career after he was attacked by a dog while protecting Judd. Wendy, Judd’s sister and a mother of three, is still attracted to her high school love, Horry, who lives at home with a severe brain injury. The reckless younger son, Phillip, can’t seem to settle down. Alice, Paul’s wife (who was Judd’s first girlfriend), thinks Judd can help her get pregnant. Judd can’t decide if he wants Penny, his old high school crush, or Jen, despite her betrayal. Interlaced with scenes of sitting shiva and interactions with friends and family who are annoying and loathsome by turns, the siblings fight, lie, and accuse one another of various harms, all while trying to come to terms with their adult selves and their new, altered reality.

While Judd grieves his father and reflects on his past, his heartaches, and his unclear future, he simultaneously observes his siblings’ emotional entanglements and his mother’s surprising new relationship. From these observations, he determines that no one seems to have things figured out any better than he does. In the end, when Judd departs on an impromptu road trip, it isn’t clear whether he is trying to make peace with his anger and grief or following a long-repressed wish for escape. 

In a book about coming to terms with the bitter and the sweet of life, readers soon see that neither Judd nor Tropper offer any real answers. The novel is instead a study of how messed-up seemingly normal people can feel. The masculinity on display is a combination of relentless sexual urges, emotional repression, competition, and a lack of overall direction, at times tempered with vague paternal urges. The women are equally confused and libidinous, and in the muddling and sometimes self-destructive ways his characters seek comfort, Tropper seems to suggest there is no tidy dramatic arc to a life, and no real resolution to one’s longings or fears.

The prevailing tone is ironic distance, which suits Judd’s sense of helplessness in dealing with his own heartaches and the struggles of the people around him. Only Judd’s mother, Hilary, who pursues her own impulses and pleasures without apology, is truly at ease with herself. The book’s use of symbolism is subtle but deep, represented by faulty electrical wiring in the house and a recurring dream Judd has about wearing a prosthesis on one leg. The ritual of sitting shiva, even though the Foxmans aren’t observant Jews, creates a narrative symmetry that contains the shifting emotions of the text. In their own way, each of the surviving Foxmans comes to a reckoning about their own hearts, futures, and relationships, which allows for a conclusion of sorts, if not a tidy denouement.

Readers will relate to the book based on how well they relate to Judd, who is realistically flawed, conflicted, hurt, and not always likable or laudable. The humor invites laughter at moments ranging from the wry to the absurd, and Tropper delivers an occasional insight that resonates not for its philosophical profundity but because it so aptly suits Judd’s character. In Chapter 36, Judd tries to reassess his place in the world after so many griefs and losses: “That’s the thing about life,” he realizes as the week of shiva nears its close, “everything feels so permanent, but you can disappear in an instant” (248).

Judd’s quest is to find a way to make peace with the currents buffeting him, with the flawed and conflicted people he loves, and with his own longing and fractured heart. In the many ridiculous moments—like Philip threatening to jump off the roof to prevent his girlfriend from leaving, then falling anyway—Tropper shows his characters stumbling in their own ways to make peace with their circumstances. He equally shows, with gentle gallows humor, the many ways they fall short.