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55 pages 1 hour read

Jonathan Tropper

This Is Where I Leave You

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

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Chapter 1-Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Wednesday”

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of pregnancy loss and sexual assault.

Judd’s older sister, Wendy, calls to tell Judd that their father, who has been ill for a year and a half due to stomach cancer, has died and requested that the family sit shiva. Their father, though Jewish, was not observant, so the request comes as a surprise. Judd describes his family as emotionally repressed, with “our own genetically engineered brand of irony and evasion” (1). Wendy will fly to the east coast from Los Angeles with her husband and three young children. Judd’s older brother Paul is also coming. Wendy has left messages for Phillip, the youngest, who tends to be irresponsible and hard to reach.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary

Judd is preparing to drive to his childhood home in Elmsbrook, New York, two hours away, when Jen, his ex-wife-to-be, arrives. He is reminded of when he first saw her riding her bike on their college campus and is embarrassed that he now rents a basement room. They had been married for nine years. Jen wants to talk, but Judd is angry and resentful and reminds her that she slept with his boss, Wade. Jen announces that she is pregnant. Judd remembers how their earlier baby was strangled in the womb by its umbilical cord just weeks before its due date. He thinks of their conversation as “lobbing regret grenades at each other” (11). He doesn’t tell her his father died.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary

Judd reflects on his marriage and its ending. He and Jen married young and believed they would be passionate forever, but inevitably, small fractures formed. Judd resents the way she tried to get him to fit in to suburban life, such as giving him a showy Rolex that, he notes, was paid for with his own money.

On Jen’s birthday, a couple months prior, Judd walked into their bedroom and found her having sex with Wade Boulanger, the radio personality who was Judd’s boss. The show relies on Wade being aggressively sexual and misogynistic. Judd, who at first couldn’t believe what he was seeing, thinks, “My life, as I knew it, was over” (21). He mashed the cake he is holding, with lit candles, into Wade’s backside. Wade, who had applied a cream meant to enhance sexual performance, screamed as his testicles caught fire. Jen fell off the bed. Judd went downstairs and smashed her grandmother’s china until the paramedics arrived.

Jen admitted she’d been sleeping with Wade for a year. Judd was angry and had nowhere to stay. He imagined driving to Maine and spun a fantasy: He’d live ruggedly, adopt a dog, and fall in love with a down-to-earth woman. Instead, he rents a basement room and feels sorry for himself.

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary

It rains as they bury Mort Foxman. The rabbi is Paul’s friend from school, whom they call Boner because he used to show the boys his dad’s porn. Phillip arrives late in a black Porsche and greets everyone, and Judd feels “the familiar wave of loss and regret that always seems to accompany our infrequent reunions” (37). Phillip calls the rabbi Boner, and Wendy admonishes him. Paul gives a eulogy that Judd thinks is more like an acceptance speech for the Most Dedicated Son award. Paul runs Foxman Sporting Goods, the business their father started. As they place soil on the coffin, Judd cries quietly, envying the way Phillip openly sobs.

Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary

The Foxman family home stands at the end of a cul-de-sac called Knob’s End. Judd notices the house needs some maintenance. Linda Callen, their neighbor and their mother Hillary’s closest friend, greets them. Linda’s husband died when their son, Horry, was young. Horry dated Wendy in high school, but in college, he was attacked in a bar fight, which resulted in a brain injury, and he now lives at home.

Wendy’s children disrupt lunch. Serena, the seven-month-old, screams over the baby monitor, and Ryan, the six-year-old, pounds the piano. Barry, Wendy’s husband, works in finance so is talking business on the phone. Alice, Paul’s wife, who is trying to get pregnant, helps Linda serve the food. Phillip’s girlfriend and life coach, Tracy, arrives. She is sophisticated, mature, and several years older than Phillip. Phillip introduces her to everyone. Cole, Wendy’s three-year-old, comes downstairs to show his father a deposit in his potty. When Barry dismisses him, Cole throws the potty onto the dinner table, and the contents fall on Paul’s plate. Judd picks Cole up and soothes the child.

Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary

Judd recalls meeting Jen. He called out to her one day while she was biking across campus, and she stopped to talk to him. He made her laugh, and she kissed him, and he was in love. He was “the nervous boy with the ridiculous hair trying so hard to be clever” (55) and thinks now he should have run for his life.

Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary

Boner brings the shiva supplies, which include low chairs and a candle that will burn for seven days. The siblings argue, and their mother steps in to insist they fulfill their father’s last wish. Judd recalls that the only real Jewish ritual they observed was having the family over for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

The siblings sit with their mother. Judd notices the scar on Paul’s hand, the result of a rottweiler attack that ended Paul’s college baseball career, and for which he blames Judd. Judd recalls losing his virginity to Alice, back in high school, well before she began dating Paul, noting that this fact likely lingers in Paul’s mind when they see each other. Judd and Paul have a tense conversation about the store, and Paul is condescending toward Judd. Judd offers his resentment that Paul didn’t call when he found out Jen was cheating or when they lost the baby. The doorbell rings, and visitors arrive. Judd recalls a time the boys went fishing with their father and Paul accidentally snagged Judd’s ear.

Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary

The Foxmans converse with people making condolence calls. Paul is terse. Phillip makes up stories about what he’s been doing. Linda oversees the food. Judd notices the age of everyone in the room and feels anxious that he has no accomplishments to speak of. Linda tells him, as they speak of Horry, “You learn not to think about what might have been, and to just appreciate what you have” (68).

Judd borrows Linda’s car to pick Horry up from the sporting goods store. Mort, his father, was originally an electrician but wanted his sons to have a legacy. Judd remembers traveling with his father to the five satellite stores when he was young. He feels that his father was good with the kids when they were small but didn’t know what to do with them as they got older. Judd feels nervous around Horry, reflecting, “You can’t help but feel bad for Horry, but you’re supposed to treat him like anyone else, because he’s damaged but not an idiot, and he’ll sniff out your pity like a dog sniffs out fear” (71). Horry smokes a joint and informs Judd that a girl Judd used to date, Penny Moore, works at the store.

Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary

Judd returns to sit shiva and finds that his mother’s friends keep talking about their single daughters. Judd is rude in return, which makes Phillip laugh. The visitors leave, and Judd learns he is sleeping in the basement, Paul’s old room. Downstairs, alone, he panics, feeling “the sense that [he’s] disappearing” (78). He listens to a voicemail from Jen, who threatens to empty their joint checking account if he doesn’t stop avoiding her. Judd wishes he could hate her.

Chapter 1-Part 1 Analysis

The first chapter, which serves as the prologue, conveys the inciting incident that sets the plot in motion, which is Mort Foxman’s request that his family sit shiva upon his death. This traditional Jewish mourning ritual works as a dramatic device to bring the characters together, and the relationships among the members of the Foxman family are designed to create tension. Covering the first day of shiva, which begins on the day of the funeral, this part of the novel provides the background or exposition, setting up the main conflicts and the individual character arcs, as well as establishing the couples who will fall apart and come together over the course of the novel.

The novel is narrated in first person by Judd, which allows the author to weave Judd’s memories and backstory in with his present-moment actions, dialogue, and perceptions. Thematically, while The Layers of Grief and Bereavement are evident on the first page with Wendy’s announcement, Judd is already bereft in other ways.

Judd’s memory of meeting Jen in college and falling instantly in love with her suggests that his love was intense and about more than Jen’s appeal as a person, since he learns relatively little about her in that first conversation. The passion and desire in their marriage falters and wanes, one of the casualties of passing time, a motif the novel explores elsewhere. Judd is a devoted husband, but his interactions with his family, whom he sees when they gather for Rosh Hashanah, suggests he does not have much in the way of strong and supportive relationships. Jen’s betrayal of his marriage cost him his job and their home, so Judd feels like he has nothing, a lack symbolized by his living in the basement both in his rented apartment and in his family home. When the family places soil on his father’s coffin, Judd weeps not only for the loss of his father but because he also feels he has lost everything and is trapped and lifeless.

Strained or broken relationships litter this early landscape. The history between Horry and Wendy, Judd and Penny, and Judd and Alice, along with Linda’s widowhood and now Hillary’s, all offer perspective on the theme of Sex and Love as Life-Affirming Needs. In contrast, Phillip’s attachment to Tracy seems both hopeful and fraught, given their difference in ages and outlooks. Judd feels humiliated by being single, as his entire identity has been wrapped up in Jen. He feels threatened, to various degrees, by the assertiveness of others around him: by his mother’s forthright declarations about her needs, by Paul’s control of the family business, by Phillip’s sexuality, and even by Horry, whose injury that confines him to live with his mother is Judd’s worst fear. Judd feels extremely threatened by and angry about Wade, his foil and replacement.

The novel’s prose is smooth and cutting at the same time, precise and vivid in its images. Dialogue provides humor and balance to the emotion as well as lively character development. Many of Jonathan Tropper’s characters are terse, ironic, and quick-witted, but their specific concerns and problems differentiate them. The use of repeated images and symbolism is subtle but adds texture to the prose, emphasizing the idea that the characters are attempting to mask or minimize their emotional pain to appear successful and avoid pity.

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