One Last Thing Before I Go

July 23, 2012
In Tropper’s latest comic novel (after This Is Where I Leave You), 44-year-old Drew Silver, the washed-up drummer for one-hit wonders the Bent Daisies, refuses lifesaving surgery to fix a torn aorta—he realizes, after all, “that the lives of everyone close to him seem to improve dramatically once they leave him behind.” Eight years ago, Silver’s band hit it big, he behaved badly, and his wife, Denise, filed for divorce. He has never forgiven himself for losing his family, and since the split, he has languished by the Jersey Turnpike in an efficiency hotel and drummed his life away at weddings and bat mitzvahs. To make his imminent demise even worse, it’s just weeks before Denise remarries (Silver’s doctor), and Silver’s Princeton-bound, 18-year-old daughter, Casey, reveals that she’s pregnant. Silver has decided to let nature run its course, but a ministroke leaves him unwittingly voicing his desire to “Be a better man,” sparking a joint effort to reunite their family. Though Silver’s charm doesn’t translate on the page, Tropper fans can rest easy—plans are in the works to bring Silver to the silver screen.

August 1, 2012
Drew Silver is dying in many ways: his marriage has been over for seven years, his ex-wife is getting remarried, his career as a rock drummer is long past, his 18-year-old daughter is pregnant, and he has a life-threatening heart condition. Tropper finds unexpected humor in all of these incongruous elements. Silver has never been much of a dad or a husband, so when he finds out about his defective heart, he determines he will not have a life-saving operation. After all, what does he have to live for? He's lived long enough to see the breakup of his band, The Bent Daisies, and his music career ended with their one-hit wonder, "Rest in Pieces." Now he's living his days with other losers at The Versailles, a run-down motel. To his credit, the awareness of his precarious health causes him to rethink his pathetic life, and he's able to come up with a to-do list that includes "Be a better father. Be a better man. Fall in love. Die." By the end of the novel he's able to cross almost everything off. Knowing he's going to die concentrates his mind, and even the surgeon--both coincidentally and ironically his ex-wife Denise's fiance--can't persuade Silver to undergo the operation. Silver is able, albeit briefly, to reestablish intimacy with Denise, and Casey, Silver's daughter, effects a temporary reconciliation that leads her to call her father "Dad" (which both perplexes and pleases him) instead of "Silver." In other words, what Silver ultimately achieves is to move beyond the inscription he imagines on his tombstone: his name, the years of his birth and death, and a phrase, the acronym for which is "WTF?" Tropper entertainingly examines the angst of middle-age masculinity as he looks at Silver, a man both growing up and growing old.

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April 1, 2012

No wonder Silver is feeling slightly desperate: his ex-wife is about to marry a terrific guy, his Princeton-bound daughter announces that she's pregnant, and if he doesn't acquiesce to an operation, he will soon drop dead. Having broken out in 2009 with This Is Where I Leave You, Tropper returns with another darkly funny, queasily heartwarming tale.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2012
Silver, the middle-aged former rock star who anchors Tropper's sixth novel, is in a rut. A drummer whose claim to fame is membership in a one-hit-wonder band, Silver lives in a sad apartment building populated by fellow middle-aged divorced men who spend their days at the pool ogling nubile college girls. Two revelations turn Silver's life upside down. His responsible teenage daughter, Casey, is pregnant, and he has an aortic dissection that could kill him at any time if he doesn't have surgery. Tired of his pointless life, he opts not to have the surgery, to the dismay of Casey and his ex-wife, Denise, who is weeks away from marrying a kindhearted doctor. Silver's impending demise gives him the courage to try to win Denise back and bond with his daughter, but his steadfast refusal to have the surgery is driving a wedge between him and the very people he longs to be closer to. Tropper is a master of the mid-life male coming-of-age story, and his latest is full of the charm and wit his readers cherish.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)