You don’t hear the publishing term “lad lit” much anymore.
It was meant to apply to contemporary male fiction involving family, romance and career rather than spies or murder — “chick lit” with a sex change.
I suppose the novels of Jonathan Tropper could be placed in this category that didn’t stick, but like the best practitioners of chick lit, the writer’s work doesn’t deserve to be pigeonholed.
The most recent Tropper book — “This Is Where I Leave You” (Plume) — has just appeared in paperback and it is a masterful account of the way families fall apart and then (sometimes) come back together in the wake of illness and death.
“This Is Where I Leave You” is set in and around the Westchester family home of the Foxman clan where the survivors try to pull themselves back together after the patriarch, Mort, passes on.
Mom Foxman says that Mort — who wasn’t a religious man — made a death bed request that the family follow the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva for the week after the funeral. This means that for the first time since they flew the nest, the four grown Foxman children — Paul, Phillip, Wendy and our protagonist Judd — will be living under the same roof.
Tropper sets up a perfect charged situation for us to enter into the lives of the Foxmans as they try to do the right thing, but keep stumbling over the family grudges and feuds which made them decide to not see so much of each other as adults.
Tropper also has a keen awareness that the death of a loved one tends to strike us when we are in the middle of other crises as well, bringing out the best and the worst in families.
Judd has just had his marriage fall apart after he caught his wife in bed with his radio shock jock boss. The other siblings also arrive home while coping with infertility, May-December romances, and more angst than I can write about in this space.
In a key scene in “This Is Where I Leave You,” Judd goes to the movies with an old female friend who might be ready to become more than that. They see one of those hideously formulaic romantic comedies that arrive in multiplexes on a regular basis.
The scene works on more than one level because we experience it in the middle of a terrific story that juggles romantic comedy with all of the real messiness of life.
If somebody could figure out a way to get Tropper’s book on the screen the result would be a romantic comedy classic on the order of “Moonstruck” or “Bull Durham” (both of which were the creations of men, by the way).
(Jonathan Tropper will be at the Fairfield Borders Books & Music store, 1499 Post Road, on Tuesday at 7 p.m.)
