Everything Changes

Zachary King has it all--beautiful fiancée, high-level job, cool apartment. But when a cancer scare invades his placid world, he begins to make risky decisions, with life-changing consequences. Scott Brick performs the first-person narration with irony, sarcasm, and vulnerability. Given the story's New York setting, Brick's natural speech patterns provide realism in tone and inflection as listeners enter Zack's world. His portrayal of Zack's Viagra-charged alcoholic father deserves mention, as the men's shared history shapes Zack as a person. Brick's performance captures the regret and bravado present in many of the story's relationships, and gives Zack's response to his father all the rage and tenderness it deserves. R.L.L. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

February 21, 2005
The arrival of a long-lost absent father forces a Manhattan man to come to terms with an ongoing romantic triangle in Tropper's latest, a funny, sensitive and occasionally over-the-top comic novel that revolves around the calamitous life of 32-year-old Zack King. King's a horrible job as a corporate drone for a supply company is balanced by his impending marriage to Hope, his gorgeous, successful fiancée. But chaos comes with the arrival of his wacky divorced father, Norm, who left Zack and his two brothers after his wife used graphic pictures of his infidelity as the backdrop for the family Christmas cards. Norm makes himself an unwelcome guest as Zack tries to deal with a potentially devastating health problem and a job crisis that makes him realize how much he hates his life. But the real problem is Zack's growing attraction to Tamara, the beautiful, recently widowed single mother who was married to Zack's friend Rael until a car accident took Rael's life and left Zack alive during an ill-fated road trip to Atlantic City. Viagra-popping Norm becomes increasingly cartoonish as the novel unfolds, and the triangle material is boilerplate, but pithy observations on love, marriage and corporate life give the book a graceful charm. Tropper continues to display a fine feel for romantic comedy in this enjoyable follow-up to The Book of Joe
. Agent, Simon Lipskar.

October 15, 2005
In Tropper's ("The Book of Joe") new book, protagonist Zach King faces serious problems in his apparently very happy life. He has a well-paying but unsatisfying dead-end advertising job and lives rent free in the apartment of a rich friend who spends his days watching endless TV reruns. Zach is about to marry a beautiful woman from a wealthy family, but he is not totally sure he is in love with her. He has very strong feelings toward the equally beautiful widow of his best friend who was killed in a car wreck two years before. And finally, his father, who walked away from his family 20 years ago, reappears and wants to reestablish ties with Zach, his two brothers, and his mother. As with Tropper's previous work, this story of family problems and personal crisis is well told and has a range of interesting and humorous characters. Scott Brick does an excellent job reading this enjoyable and touching work; recommended for larger collections." -Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ., Parkersburg"

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.