The Book of Joe is actually my second Tropper book of the year, the first being This Is Where I Leave You, which made me fall a little bit in love with him. The Book of Joe confirmed, if it's not love, it's at least a pretty serious crush.
This was actually an earlier book, and it felt like it. He has my propensity for sometimes being just thiiiis much too clever with his turns of phrase. For using eighteen words where six might work, as it were. But, the thing is, he is clever. He writes some really funny, really biting, occasionally unexpected stuff.
Quick synopsis (by request, since apparently I rarely ever actually say much about what the book is about, and some of you would like the elevator pitch): Joe is a guy in his mid-thirties who has recently hit the big time with his debut novel. He's rolling in money, driving a great car, and sort of a little bit miserable. When his father falls ill, he heads out of New York and back to the small New England town he's not returned to in nearly seventeen years. Because, teensy weensy detail, the book he wrote was about said small New England town, and most of the people in it, and it was ... let's say, unflattering. Chaos inevitably ensues. There you have it.
Every once in a while throughout his novel Tropper sounds a little bit like a guy trying not to write a guys' book, and gives in to a sort of sappy tone of predictability. Still, it's nice to hear a guy writing about a guy and not being afraid to include some fear, some serious self-doubt, and some true, childhood love that has (almost) nothing to do with sex. His characters are well thought out and lovable, even the idiots, and he lets you care about them all. I don't know what the male equivalent of chick lit is called, but this is a shining example of it.
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