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This Is Where I Leave You
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This Is Where I Leave You (2009) (edit title/settings)

by Jonathan Tropper (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

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 fourteen-month affair with Judd’s radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully... read more

Summary edit see section history

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 fourteen-month affair with Judd’s radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

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 fourteen-month affair with Judd’s radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public.

Simultaneously mourning the death of his father and the demise of his marriage, 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. In the same house. Like a family.

As the week quickly spins out of control, longstanding grudges resurface, secrets are revealed, and old passions reawakened. For Judd, it’s a weeklong attempt to make sense of the mess his life has become while trying in vain not to get sucked into the regressive battles of his madly dysfunctional family. All of which would be hard enough without the bomb Jen dropped the day Judd’s father died: She’s pregnant.

This Is Where I Leave You is Jonathan Tropper's most accomplished work to date, a riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind—whether we like it or not.

Characters/People edit see section history

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “I'm going home to bury my father and face my family, and she should be there with me, but she's not mine anymore. You get married to have an ally against your family, and now I'm heading into the trenches alone.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”
    Linda Callen
  • “You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you've lost.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “Some families, like some couples, become toxic to each other after prolonged exposure.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “You can sit up here, feeling above it all while knowing you’re not, coming to the lonely conclusion that the only thing you can ever really know about anyone is that you don’t know anything about them at all.”
  • “We knew marriage could be difficult in the same way we knew there were starving children in Africa. It was tragic but worlds away from our reality.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “Rock bottom rose up to meet me.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “The book was a national phenomenon and turned my mother into something of a celebrity expert on parenting. Predictably, my siblings and I were screwed up beyond repair.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “"It just happened" was Phillip's go-to explanation for pretty much everything, the perfect epitaph for a man who always seemed to be an innocent bystander to his own life.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “I shake my head. "It's just hard to see people from your past when your present is so cataclysmically fucked."”
    Judd Foxman
  • “It's an absurd request. Our minds, unedited by guilt or shame, are selfish and unkind, and the majority of our thoughts, at any given time, are not for public consumption, because they would either by hurtful or else just make us look like the selfish and unkind bastards we are. We don't share our thoughts, we share carefully sanitized, watered-down versions of them, Hollywood adaptations of those thoughts dumbed down for the PG-13 crowd.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “"Over the course of a fifty-year marriage, one bad year isn't very significant. Your marriage might still be there to be saved. But you'll never know if you keep indulging your hate and anger like the world owes you reparations."”
    Mrs. Foxman
  • “Why are all of the skating rinks trapped in the eighties?”
    Judd Foxman
  • “You never know when it will be the last time you'll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “And there's a special place in shiva hell reserved for men in sandals, their cracked, hardened toenails, dark with fungus, proudly on display.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “"Emotional growth hurts. It's nothing a few more shots won't fix."”
    Phillip Foxman.
  • “Wendy sighs, like it's positively exhausting having to navigate the dense forest of my obtuseness.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “At some point you lose sight of your actual parents; you just see a basketful of history and unresolved issues.”
    Judd Foxman
  • “I feel like I'm watching the opening scene of an AARP porno.”
    Phillip Foxman
  • “Our shiva is quite the scene for the over-sixty set.”
    Judd Foxman
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Setting & Locations edit see section history

First Sentence edit see section history

"Dad's dead," Wendy says offhandedly, like it's happened before, like it happens everyday.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Jonathan Tropper (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Dutton
Country: United States
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN: 9780525951278
Page Count: 339

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3570.R5885 T47 2009
  • Dewey: 813.54

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