Title: One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper
Publisher: Penguin Publishing
Imprint: Dutton Adult
Genre: Contemporary, Fiction
Length: 336 pages
Book Rating: B
Review Copy Obtained from Publisher Through Edelweiss
Summary:
The bestselling author of This Is Where I Leave You returns with a hilarious and heart-rending tale about one family’s struggle to reconnect.
You don’t have to look very hard at Drew Silver to see that mistakes have been made. His fleeting fame as the drummer for a one-hit wonder rock band is nearly a decade behind him. He lives in the Versailles, an apartment building filled almost exclusively with divorced men like him, and makes a living playing in wedding bands. His ex-wife, Denise, is about to marry a guy Silver can’t quite bring himself to hate. And his Princeton-bound teenage daughter Casey has just confided in him that she’s pregnant—because Silver is the one she cares least about letting down.
So when he learns that his heart requires emergency, lifesaving surgery, Silver makes the radical decision to refuse the operation, choosing instead to use what little time he has left to repair his relationship with Casey, become a better man, and live in the moment, even if that moment isn’t destined to last very long. As his exasperated family looks on, Silver grapples with the ultimate question of whether or not his own life is worth saving.
With the wedding looming and both Silver and Casey in crisis, this broken family struggles to come together, only to risk damaging each other even more. One Last Thing Before I Go is Jonathan Tropper at his funny, insightful, heartbreaking best.
The Review:
One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper is a funny, sometimes poignant novel about a middle-aged man who comes face to face with his own mortality.
Drew Silver has more than his share of emotional baggage. He is middle aged and divorced with a plethora of regret, complicated relationships with his ex-wife and daughter and unrealized dreams. But despite his misery, there is something incredibly likeable about Silver and you cannot help but feel empathy for the mess that his life has become. When faced with a life or death decision, Silver is on the fence. Not sure if he wants to live, yet not quite ready to die, Silver re-evaluates his life, realizes he comes up short and resolves to become a better man.
There is no dramatic makeover for Silver. He continues to take missteps and make some fairly colossal mistakes. But he does come to some profound realizations and he does try (with some degree of success) to mend his broken relationships.
Despite a sometimes depressing outlook, One Last Thing Before I Go always maintains a degree of hopefulness. Jonathan Tropper does an outstanding job making Silver a sympathetic character with realistic flaws and imperfections. Silver’s plight will resonate with readers as they join him on his sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking life-altering journey.