August 2012 - Confessions of a Readaholic

THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU: A REVIEW FOR THE BALLS ON FIRE

August 31, 2012

This is Where I leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Format: eBook

This is Where I leave You

Author:Jonathan Tropper

“This is where I leave you”, is a salve for every family. It was just a hitchhiker for me. A hilarious book, no doubt about it, but consist of a bit of snobbery.

The novel begins when Judd Foxman is completely down in the dumps, because of the knowledge that his wife, Jen, has been unfaithful to him. Tropper has written a completely sympathetic character going through a very tough time without making him pathetic.

Each person in this book, even the secondary characters, leaps off the page. Foxman clan is completely ridiculous. The Foxman siblings and their mother are a selective bunch who grow emotionally as they are brought together physically to sit Shiva after their father passes away. This week together is not exactly pain-free for the family, as repressed grudges, emotions, and secrets are slowly exposed. Only after the family licks their old wounds can they begin to heal the new ones left by their father’s death. While each person in This Is Where I Leave You grapples with death, they are also dealing with their own lives.

But as tragic as the book is at times,through the searing one liners and metaphors, the stuff is hilarious. Between Judd’s mother’s calm, humanistic approach to just about everything, his brother Philip’s promiscuous ways, and sister Wendy’s snappy straight-talk, the reader will LOL!

In the end, Judd eventually finds his way through the maze of the past and into the present.

But somewhere in the middle it is possible that it is not a book as it is easily imaginable that it’s not a novel but a motion picture. I won’t consider Tropper to be on another level but still the book is recommended for a casual summer reading.

Fiction, Reviews

Booker Prize- an English Snobbery

August 28, 2012

Booker Prize- an English Snobbery

Irvine Welsh, a novelist who doesn’t like Man Booker Prize and isn’t afraid to say so. The Scotchman who has supplied the Scottish experience in novels like “Skagboys” and its prequel,”Trainsporting”, voxes his concerns with United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary prize. He issued that the prize’s singular focus is on England and its upper-crust literature.

The Booker Prize is supposed to honor the first-rate fiction from the United Kingdom, Ireland or the Commonwealth nations. Past winners include Salman Rushdie, Peter Carey, and Aravind Adiga. Welsh also claimed that the prize is based on a conception that the upper-class Englishness is the culture yardstick against which all the literature is measured.

Welsh has previously called for Scottish independence, though he seems more of an expression of pride than a realistic political proposal.

Welsh, who has never won the prize, isn’t the first one to criticize the prize’s focus; Julian Barnes one called the Booker “posh bingo”. Then Barnes himself won in 2011 for “The Sense of an Ending” and seems to have happily accepted the prize, proving once again that there is no remedy quite like victory.