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Joe Goffman was fifteen years out from his sleepy hometown when he wrote Bush Falls, a searing critique of its people and institutions. The book was a runaway best seller, and led to an even more successful movie. Now, however, Joe's got a problem. His father has suffered a stroke, and that means that Joe has to go back to his birthplace after having successfully antagonized every person living there. Can Joe survive the reservoirs of hatred that have been waiting to pour down upon him? Just maybe.
Doug Parker is a widower at age 29, and in his quiet suburban town, that makes him something of a celebrity - the object of sympathy, curiosity, and, in some cases, unbridled desire. But Doug has other things on his mind. First there's his 16-year-old stepson, Russ - a once-sweet kid who now is getting into increasingly serious trouble on a daily basis. And then there are Doug's sisters.
To all appearances, Zachary King is a man with luck on his side. A steady, well-paying job, a rent-free Manhattan apartment, and Hope, his stunning, blue-blooded fiancee: smart, sexy, and completely out of his league. But as the wedding day looms, Zack finds himself haunted by the memory of his best friend, Rael, killed in a car wreck two years earlier, and by his increasingly complicated feelings for Tamara, the beautiful widow Rael left behind.
The death of Judd Foxman's father marks the first time that the entire Foxman family - including Judd's mother, brothers, and sister - have been together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd's wife, Jen, whose 14-month affair with Judd's radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public. Judd joins the rest of the Foxmans as they reluctantly submit to their patriarch's dying request: to spend the seven days following the funeral together.
Andy Carter was happy. He had a solid job. He ran 5Ks for charity. He was living a nice, safe Midwestern existence. And then his wife left him for a handsome paramedic down the street. We're All Damaged begins after Andy has lost his job, ruined his best friend's wedding, and moved to New York City, where he lives in a tiny apartment with an angry cat named Jeter that isn't technically his. But before long he needs to go back to Omaha to say good-bye to his dying grandfather.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office.
Joe Goffman was fifteen years out from his sleepy hometown when he wrote Bush Falls, a searing critique of its people and institutions. The book was a runaway best seller, and led to an even more successful movie. Now, however, Joe's got a problem. His father has suffered a stroke, and that means that Joe has to go back to his birthplace after having successfully antagonized every person living there. Can Joe survive the reservoirs of hatred that have been waiting to pour down upon him? Just maybe.
Doug Parker is a widower at age 29, and in his quiet suburban town, that makes him something of a celebrity - the object of sympathy, curiosity, and, in some cases, unbridled desire. But Doug has other things on his mind. First there's his 16-year-old stepson, Russ - a once-sweet kid who now is getting into increasingly serious trouble on a daily basis. And then there are Doug's sisters.
To all appearances, Zachary King is a man with luck on his side. A steady, well-paying job, a rent-free Manhattan apartment, and Hope, his stunning, blue-blooded fiancee: smart, sexy, and completely out of his league. But as the wedding day looms, Zack finds himself haunted by the memory of his best friend, Rael, killed in a car wreck two years earlier, and by his increasingly complicated feelings for Tamara, the beautiful widow Rael left behind.
The death of Judd Foxman's father marks the first time that the entire Foxman family - including Judd's mother, brothers, and sister - have been together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd's wife, Jen, whose 14-month affair with Judd's radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public. Judd joins the rest of the Foxmans as they reluctantly submit to their patriarch's dying request: to spend the seven days following the funeral together.
Andy Carter was happy. He had a solid job. He ran 5Ks for charity. He was living a nice, safe Midwestern existence. And then his wife left him for a handsome paramedic down the street. We're All Damaged begins after Andy has lost his job, ruined his best friend's wedding, and moved to New York City, where he lives in a tiny apartment with an angry cat named Jeter that isn't technically his. But before long he needs to go back to Omaha to say good-bye to his dying grandfather.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office.
Born into rural poverty, Gabrielle Chanel and her siblings are sent to an orphanage after their mother's death. The sisters nurture Gabrielle's exceptional sewing skills, a talent that will propel the willful young woman into a life far removed from the drudgery of her childhood.
Tom Violet always thought that by the time he turned 35, he’d have everything going for him. Fame. Fortune. A beautiful wife. A satisfying career as a successful novelist. A happy dog to greet him at the end of the day. The reality, though, is far different. He’s got a wife, but their problems are bigger than he can even imagine. And he’s written a novel, but the manuscript he’s slaved over for years is currently hidden in his desk drawer while his father, an actual famous writer, just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His career, such that it is, involves mind-numbing corporate buzzwords....
Sophie's husband, James, is a loving father, a handsome man, a charismatic and successful public figure. And yet he stands accused of a terrible crime. Sophie is convinced he is innocent and desperate to protect her precious family from the lies that threaten to rip them apart. Kate is the lawyer hired to prosecute the case: an experienced professional who knows that the law is all about winning the argument. And yet Kate seeks the truth at all times. She is certain James is guilty and is determined he will pay for his crimes.
Anna Fox lives alone - a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times...and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, mother, their teenaged son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn't, her world begins to crumble. And its shocking secrets are laid bare.
Today is Leonard Peacock's birthday. It is also the day he hides a gun in his backpack. Because today is the day he will kill his former best friend, and then himself, with his grandfather's P-38 pistol. But first he must say good-bye to the four people who matter most to him: his Humphrey Bogart - obsessed next-door neighbor, Walt; his classmate Baback, a violin virtuoso; Lauren, the Christian homeschooler he has a crush on; and Herr Silverman, who teaches the high school's class on the Holocaust.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads to the colors of the houses to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother - who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter, Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons.
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon - the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell". But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness.
Exposing the many lies told on and off the psychoanalyst's couch, Lying on the Couch gives listeners a tantalizing, almost illicit glimpse at what their therapists might really be thinking during their sessions. Fascinating, engrossing, and relentlessly intelligent, it ultimately moves listeners with a denouement of surprising humanity and redemptive faith.
Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge - until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents - but they quickly realize the dark truth.
Eleanor knows she's a mess. But today she will tackle the little things. She will shower and get dressed. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons after dropping off her son, Timby. She won't swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action - life happens. Today, it turns out, is the day Timby has decided to fake sick to weasel his way into his mother's company. It's also the day Joe has chosen to tell his office - but not Eleanor - that he's on vacation.
Sebastien Ranes’s single mom and her feckless boyfriend can’t be bothered to take care of a stuttering 12-year-old. Banished to live with his grandmother on the far side of the country, the boy can barely understand a bus schedule when he gets dumped at the Greyhound station in Stockton, California. Given $35 and a one-way ticket to Altoona, Pennsylvania, Sebastien must cross the country - alone, without a clue how to fend for himself. Filled with youthful anger and naïveté, Sebastien heads out into the "Morning in America" of Ronald Reagan’s 1980s.
Eve Fletcher is trying to figure out what comes next. A 46-year-old divorcée whose beloved only child has just left for college, Eve is struggling to adjust to her empty nest when one night her phone lights up with a text message. Sent from an anonymous number, the mysterious sender tells Eve, "U R my MILF!" Over the months that follow, that message comes to obsess Eve. Before long, Eve's online fixations begin to spill over into real life, revealing new romantic possibilities that threaten to upend her quiet suburban existence.
The best-selling author of This Is Where I Leave You returns with a hilarious and heart-rending tale about one family's struggle to reconnect.
You don't have to look very hard at Drew Silver to see that mistakes have been made. His fleeting fame as the drummer for a one-hit wonder rock band is nearly a decade behind him. He lives in the Versailles, an apartment building filled almost exclusively with divorced men like him, and makes a living playing in wedding bands. His ex-wife, Denise, is about to marry a guy Silver can't quite bring himself to hate. And his Princeton-bound teenage daughter, Casey, has just confided in him that she's pregnant - because Silver is the one she cares least about letting down.
So when he learns that his heart requires emergency, lifesaving surgery, Silver makes the radical decision to refuse the operation, choosing instead to use what little time he has left to repair his relationship with Casey, become a better man, and live in the moment, even if that moment isn't destined to last very long. As his exasperated family looks on, Silver grapples with the ultimate question of whether or not his own life is worth saving.
With the wedding looming and both Silver and Casey in crisis, this broken family struggles to come together, only to risk damaging each other even more. One Last Thing Before I Go is Jonathan Tropper at his funny, insightful, heartbreaking best.
Five hours in the car and I was truly sad to hear the last of him, even replayed the ending. Death is around us and changes us but not until it feels real enough. The story is a little movie-structured, but feels honest enough. It's not action packed or even startling with big changes - it's just, well - "true" feeling. The read from John Shea feels spot on and really let's you feel for the guy despite his obvious issues. I confess, I didn't think I'd like it. Then I found myself liking it enough to want to keep following him and find out how he made out with the rest of his life. Nice.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful
Where does One Last Thing Before I Go rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
I devour audio books and have read a ton, from David Sedaris to David Halberstam. Jonathan Tropper is one of my favorite authors, for his contemporary voice and incisive views into human foibles. I loved, loved, loved, this book. It drew me in from the first sentence. I got to the point where I didn't want to listen becaues I knew the ending would come sooner than I wanted.
What did you like best about this story?
I love the idea of this middle-aged loser, so sweet and basically kind, but so lost. And how he finds his way. The way we all want to find ours. This book is also funny, even laugh-out-loud funny in places.
Have you listened to any of John Shea’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I'm not sure if I've heard this narrator before, but he did an outstanding job.There is a very fine line between giving one's characters unique voices--or ruining the listener's experience by giving secondary characters weird voices that stand out and destroy the book. Shea navigated this line with aplomb. I enjoyed his narration tremendously.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I laughed, I cried. I have "liked" it on FB. I want all my friends to read it. I want the world to read it! My husband, who tends to stick to thrillers by Baldacci, Demille, Grisham, Coben and Child) read this book. And LOVED it! It's a book that everyone can enjoy and gain something from.
Any additional comments?
I stumbled on Jonathan Tropper by accident, but what a happy accident it was. I've read all his books and think this one might be my favorite. I loved the writing so much, I have put all my other Tropper books back on my iPod for a second listen.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
Would you consider the audio edition of One Last Thing Before I Go to be better than the print version?
This book was definitely enhanced by being in audio version. The narrator sounds a lot like Garrison Keillor, which is a good thing, in my estimation.
What was one of the most memorable moments of One Last Thing Before I Go?
I almost ditched the book after listening to the first 40 minutes or so. I couldn't seem to connect to the characters, and it just didn't grab me. Not too much later, I was in love with the book. The plot premise was intriguing: the protagonist, a royal screw-up in life, faces a decision about his own death. As the book progressed, I couldn't wait to hear what would happen next. The dry humor of the author crept up on me, and his mercilessly clear yet mercifully understanding approach to the characters rang true. The author has an eye for multifaceted human beings, deeply flawed and yet somehow familiar and engaging. Once I started enjoying this book, I feel in love with it and couldn't wait to hear the next installment.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
Would you consider the audio edition of One Last Thing Before I Go to be better than the print version?
I can answer this question, because I actually read the print version before listening to the audiobook, something I like to do with books I love, especially if I know they will translate well to audio. This one does indeed translate well, in large part because it is a lot of fun -- at least it ends up being fun after getting off to a depressing start.
For me, both versions are cause for celebration. That's because I have become a big Jonathan Tropper fan, since reading his prior novel, This is Where I Leave You. My wife was reading it and laughing up a storm. What's so funny, I asked. I read it for myself, and in short order caught up on his entire back catalog of four previous novels, of which Book of Joe is my favorite (so I listened to it after reading it as well). I then jumped at One Last Thing when it came out about a year later, reading the book and then listened to it.
Sorry for the long preamble, but it leads to this: Most of these novels are pretty much the same. You have to really like what JT is doing -- variations on a theme from book to book -- to appreciate going from one to the next and so on. I do, big time. If you've never read or listened to his books before, there is no reason to worry -- get it and laugh, a lot. If you've only read one, try another and see which way you react to reading something so similar. Then decide whether to continue on from there, because the others are going to all be in a similar vein.
What did you like best about this story?
Although it ends up being very much like the others, JT does start out flipping things around -- Tropper trying to do something different. This is his first novel that is not in the first person, and that makes a difference. And this time, it is about the father with the life threatening condition, not about the son dealing with a father who has died or is about to die. Which means it's not about coping with the death of a parent, but about deciding (literally) if life is worth living or if you'd be better off dead. So a definite shift in perspective, in several senses of the word.
But what I liked best about One Last Thing is not that JT tried to change things up (a wee bit), but the path his main character, Silver, takes in deciding whether he wants to save himself (literally, from his medical condition, and also in retaking hold of his life). The first thing you run into there is the suburban hotel where all the divorced men like him now live, their wives having kicked them out of their houses -- wonderful stuff, great characters, and as I read somewhere else, the Greek Chorus of Silver's life.
Then his father enters the picture, convincing Silver to join him in a series of life-cycle events that he presides over as a rabbi -- a wedding, a funeral, a bar mitzvah, etc. -- where he can see how other people deal with life-altering changes and where he has personal reactions.
But best of all, part of Silver's medical condition causes him to speak his inner thoughts out loud, often at the most inappropriate times. The way Tropper writes this is ingenious. You read Silver's internal monologue as in any novel. Then all of a sudden other characters react as if it was spoken out loud. I never got used to the device, never saw it coming, even after I realized what was happening and how he was doing it. And that works really well in audio format too.
Which scene was your favorite?
There is a scene where two of these devices come together, where Silver's father takes him to a funeral of someone he never knew. In considering the parallels of the event to his own situation, his inner thoughts manifest themselves out loud without him realizing it -- he starts singing Amazing Grace, a Christian hymn at a Jewish funeral. But it works -- for him and for the mourners. That is when he realizes what his father is doing by taking him to these events. It is a minor epiphany, a mid-act climax, en route to his ultimate life-affirming epiphany and the book's final climax.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
... And Another Thing, and Another...
Any additional comments?
I haven't seen any negative reviews of this book from people who never read Tropper before. The only consistent criticism of any weight is that it again adheres to Tropper's literary formula, tried and true as it is. And it seems that is only because this book is maybe half a star below This Is Where I Leave You, the one that most readers loved the most, the one through which most return readers discovered Tropper.
OK, fair enough, even though I personally still haven't had enough and am looking forward to the already-planned film adaptations One Last Thing and This Is Where I Leave You and JT's next book, whenever that may come out.
On the flip side, there is Banshee. When I first heard that Tropper had created a TV series about dysfunction in rural Pennsylvania, I thought it was going to be a family comedy with a literary bent, like his books. It is anything but. It's an action drama with ultraviolence and near-pornographic sex. Lots of dysfunction, yes, but no laughs whatsoever. I like it well enough for what it is, but it has no traces of Tropper the author that I have come to love.
If the exception proves the rule, then let's not hear any more complaints about JT sticking to his formula, because he hasn't exactly knocked it out of the park by deviating from it so dramatically with Banshee.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
Drew Silver passes out and wakes in the hospital to learn he must undergo emergency surgery or die. He decides against the surgery. The story follows Silver, a former rock star, over the course of the following week as he learns his teen-aged daughter is pregnant and we learn that he is still madly in love with his ex-wife who is about to marry his doctor. Silver realizes time has moved too fast, and at the same time not at all. Like the universe had been on pause. So, a lot of serious stuff. Broken heart literally, broken heart figuratively, and an unplanned pregnancy. And it is told in the form of a sitcom. It is hilarious. I have never read a comedy before. The book gives you some things to think about in your own life and offers a laugh. Another reader mentioned that the book gets off to a slow start, and I agree. Didn’t know if I would continue, but after about an hour it really gets going. Stick with it.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
As you listen to this book you can't help but start to feel that you know this main character like a friend and when the book ends you feel as if you've lost one. I couldn't stop listening and rooting for him the entire time. You'll grieve when it's over.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
This was not my favorite by Jonathan Tropper, but still worth the listen. The narration was great and kept me listening. The story was a great blend of sad and funny. The only thing I didn't like is that I couldn't really connect with any of the characters. I've read almost everything by Tropper and usually find myself sympathizing with his characters. This time i just hated all of them. That being said, the book was still touching in parts and made me laugh. I'd definitely recommend it.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
Different narrator. The book is hardly in the class with Tropper's others, but still his skill for describing every day events in a way that these things actually happen makes his stories awfully appealing.
How did the narrator detract from the book?
Though I've never understood the appeal of listening to 8or more hours of raspy diction, I have dealt with it. Add the wheezy element, though, and i feel as if i might as well be listening to a feeble Burl Ives narrate a B'rer Rabbit tale. I concur with some reviewers that relatively mild tonal variations for various speakers is always a plus, although listening to an 18 year old girl who sounds like Burl Ives is disconcerting.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Talk about a heartbreaking "Where's my daddy" story. I completely fell in love with this book and John Shea!
A wonderful and engaging listen.. great characters and a hilarious take on the modern family.