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One Last Thing Before I Go

by Jonathan Tropper, John Shea (Narrator)

3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 · rating details · 3,875 ratings · 836 reviews

Following the New York Times bestseller This Is Where I Leave You, Jonathan Tropper’s latest novel is a moving, funny look at one broken family’s attempt to reconnect—without destroying each other in the process.

Silver has begun to accept that life isn’t going to turn out as he expected. His ex-wife is about to marry a terrific guy Silver can’t quite bring himself to hate....more

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Published August 21st 2012 by Penguin Audio (first published January 1st 2012)

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One Last Thing Before I Go
by Jonathan Tropper

Release date: May 28, 2013

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.

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Aug 02, 2012 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Silver is forty-four, a former drummer with the one-hit-wonder band, The Bent Daisies. After the front man/vocalist, Pat Mcreedy, left them and went solo, they tanked, dried up, and disbanded. Now Silver is a notch above broke, and his ex-wife, Denise is about to get married to the doctor who wants to perform life-saving surgery on him. But Silver is about the most passively suicidal guy you may meet in fiction.

Silver lives on his royalty checks from the song, “Rest in Pieces,” or plays Bar Mitz...more Silver is forty-four, a former drummer with the one-hit-wonder band, The Bent Daisies. After the front man/vocalist, Pat Mcreedy, left them and went solo, they tanked, dried up, and disbanded. Now Silver is a notch above broke, and his ex-wife, Denise is about to get married to the doctor who wants to perform life-saving surgery on him. But Silver is about the most passively suicidal guy you may meet in fiction.

Silver lives on his royalty checks from the song, “Rest in Pieces,” or plays Bar Mitzvahs and weddings, when he can get a gig. Mcreedy’s career is epic and glitzy, and he sleeps with sexy celebrities. Silver hangs out with a group of losers in the tatty Versailles apartments, where they scope out young daisies in bikinis and nod off at the pool. In between, they make weekly deposits at the sperm bank to supplement their income.

Tropper has a knack for combining flippant with rueful to achieve sharp and piercing. His leading men are Jewish, middle-aged, overweight, and emotionally adolescent. This book and the last one—This is Where I Leave You-- have titles that underscore absence, departing, and abandonment. There’s as much death cloud as sex haze in the atmosphere. But there’s at least one compelling reason to keep Silver onward through the fog. Or is there?

The only person who seems to need Silver right now is his eighteen-year-old daughter, Casey. But only because she’s afraid of disappointing her mother with the news that she’s pregnant. So she tells her dad, whom she sometimes calls Dad, but often calls Silver. She’s a combination of spiky and vulnerable, and her presence makes you root for Silver to wake up from his numbed slumber and be the strong and able support that she needs. The scenes with Casey are often the most tender and fragile.

“Mom and Rich got me a G35 for my graduation.”
“That was nice of them.”
“Mom’s still compensating for you. I milk it a little.”
“I would. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why’d you come to me?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I care less about letting you down.”

This isn’t the side-splitting, laugh-out-loud humor of the last book, but is just as witty and cinematic. The movie rights have already been spoken for, which may bother some readers—that it has a filmic presence to it. (I think of Adam Sandler, and would be surprised if anyone else plays him in the movie.) However, the snappy dialogue and supple visuals are fresh and acute with its bent sense of humor. Silver keeps accidentally thinking out loud, which may be the most gimmicky aspect, although it is nuanced gimmick, if you will. There’s a hint of customized formula, but with an edge to it, and some loose ends that feel right.

My husband and I have an eighteen-year-old daughter, and—don’t shudder--we found aspects of this book therapeutic and and highly relatable. It’s madcap at times, improbable, and sometimes too clever. And yet…and yet…it’s about ordinary people trying to redeem themselves, to make sense of their place in the world, confront their shame and cowardice, and to love their children without too much toxic spillover. Sometimes we need a mop and a bucket to clean up our messes--and a spark from a quick, funny, savage, messy, poignant yarn about a guy who thinks out loud.
4.5 stars(less)

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Sep 27, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Quick read. And totally quintessential Tropper. You have your male lead surrounded by people/family that he is both loved and hated by. His inner monologue is funny and self-deprecating and completely recognizable as JT.
So we have Silver, Drew Silver who is a middle aged guy who was once famous for a punk band back in the day. He had it all, kinda. A wife and and daughter and lost them both when his wife divorced him. We start the story almost 8 years after the divorce and we see Silver as he m...more
Quick read. And totally quintessential Tropper. You have your male lead surrounded by people/family that he is both loved and hated by. His inner monologue is funny and self-deprecating and completely recognizable as JT.
So we have Silver, Drew Silver who is a middle aged guy who was once famous for a punk band back in the day. He had it all, kinda. A wife and and daughter and lost them both when his wife divorced him. We start the story almost 8 years after the divorce and we see Silver as he makes a deposit at the sperm bank for cash. We see how pathetic he is as he recounts all his past mistakes and regrets (in a humorous way of course) and we see that he's kind of a douche- but one that's likable if you can picture that.
Silver's ex wife is about to get married. And his 18 year old daughter finds out that she's pregnant and against her better judgment she comes to Silver for guidance. Silver has been out of her life for said 7 years but he says he'll support whatever decision she makes. Before she makes one he ends up collapsing and finds out that has some blood vessel or capillary or something (i forget, please forgive me) that is on the verge of tearing that will kill him but it's fixable via surgery. Get this: the surgeon who tells this him this news is the fiancé of his ex wife. This is a guy that Silver both likes and hates at the same time.
So we're carried through a week in Silver's life where he's decided to not go through with the operation because his life basically sucks and we see the family come out and the friends come out and tell him why he should do it.
Does he get the surgery? Does he have a one night-er with his ex wife? Does his daughter end up keeping the baby?
I have to admit the ending is a little iffy for me. But I enjoyed the book overall. It dealt with one's life as one knows it and what we make it to be. What is life all about? When we think it's not worth it to go on, what keeps us waking up and living another day?
The book doesn't really go into all that but it did make me think a little. But I laughed more (on the inside, not LOL or anything). Tropper has yet to let me down. (less)

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Sep 18, 2012 Florinda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Drew Silver--just "Silver" to nearly everyone, including his ex-wife, his semi-estranged daughter, and his own parents--has been physically and emotionally stuck for the better part of a decade, since the breakups of both his band and his marriage. When he's the first to be told by his daughter Casey--just graduated from high school as class valedictorian--that she's pregnant, no one's more surprised than he is, unless it's her. But the bigger surprise is that when he accompanies her to a clinic...more Drew Silver--just "Silver" to nearly everyone, including his ex-wife, his semi-estranged daughter, and his own parents--has been physically and emotionally stuck for the better part of a decade, since the breakups of both his band and his marriage. When he's the first to be told by his daughter Casey--just graduated from high school as class valedictorian--that she's pregnant, no one's more surprised than he is, unless it's her. But the bigger surprise is that when he accompanies her to a clinic for what should be a fairly simple procedure, he's the one who ends up in the hospital. Tests after a small stroke reveal an aortic tear--a life-threatening condition, but at a stage where it can easily be fixed by surgery. But Silver doesn't want it fixed--he's screwed up enough, and all he wants is time to fix his relattionship with Casey before he makes his exit.

The father-daughter relationship is the central one in One Last Thing Before I Go, and it's a messy, complicated, ultimately endearing one. Silver believes Casey is a much better child than he deserves--she's clearly not perfect, but on balance, he's probably right about that, although their simultaneous crises are providing plenty of opportunities for him to make things up to her. His efforts to do that, fumbling as some of them are, were what eventually won me over. Silver has a massive self-pitying streak and was clearly suffering from untreated depression even before he accepted a probable death sentence; both are understandable, but as much as I wanted to sympathize, there were stretches of the novel where I found it pretty difficult.

In fact, what stands out to me about One Last Thing... is that it was a funny novel that made me feel profoundly sad for its characters at least as much as it tickled me. I didn't find it funny in the same way as This Is Where I Leave You; while it does have a few strong set pieces, much of its humor is wry, observational, and tinged with a very dark edge. It suits the material, but it wasn't quite what I expected. And I definitely did not expect to be moved nearly to tears, but I was, and more than just once or twice. That response made me question whether Tropper might actually be off his game; I was well into the novel before I decided that he was he very much ON it, and playing it very well.

I usually write up my thoughts on a book as soon as possible after I finish it, but it took several days before I was ready to do that with One Last Thing Before I Go. I didn't expect to be so affected by it, but I'm so glad I was. Not only is Jonathan Tropper on his game here, he's raised the stakes; this may be his richest novel yet, and I think it may end up as one of my favorite reads of the year.(less)

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Aug 19, 2012 Sofia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

3.5 stars rounded up to four. I received an ARC of this from a Dutton giveaway on Twitter.

I'm generally not into books that explore the male psyche, but Jonathan Tropper's latest offers a solid story, well-drawn characters, and some great dialogue. Indeed, the dialogue is where the book really shines, and I could easily see "One Last Thing Before I Go" being made into a movie. My favorite parts were Silver's exchanges and interludes with Jack and Oliver, which alternated beautifully between mom...more

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Apr 12, 2013 Kimberly rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read another book of Tropper's, "This is Where I Leave You," and immediately fell in love. I've been scouring the library until this one came up and I was a little disappointed. "Silver" is in a really bad place, leaving in a crap apartment, hanging out with other loser single men in a fancy apartment building catering to them. His ex-wife is engaged to a renouned neurosurgeon and he hasn't spoken to his 17-year-old daughter in years becuase he thinks he's a loswer and has nothing to offer her...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Nancy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tropper certainly seems to understand the deadbeat male psyche and this story generates a degree of empathy for his main character, Drew Silver, a has-been rock star who walked out on his wife and young daughter. After a decade or so of living among his likewise sad-sack male friends, Silver's Princeton-bound daughter re-enters his life to announce her accidental pregnancy, just as Silver learns he requires life-saving surgery. While Silver considers whether to give into his failings and die rat...more

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Mar 23, 2013 Karen McMillan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This is a fantastic book! It is funny, moving and wise – and just a complete joy to read. Silver is forty-four and leading a lonely and miserable life. He was a drummer in a band that managed to have one major hit before disbanding and sliding into obscurity. He’s divorced from the love of his life and his super smart teenager daughter, Casey, doesn’t want to have that much to do with him. But then Casey comes to him with the news that she is pregnant, thinking that telling her old man first wil...more

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Mar 11, 2013 Ed Bernard rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Jonathon Tropper has become my go-to author for a light but meaningful quick read to transition between challenging books. His books are generally set in suburban New York and feature Jewish male protagonists, which is in my sweet spot. However, his protagonists are generally screw ups who, through some event, have a chance to review their lives, look for some redemption, and transition to a different way. In this book, the hero is a musician whose band had a hit back in the day, which essential...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Matt Allen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013-reads

Lightning fast read and typical Tropper--which are both very good things.

Another Tropper move is to use first narrative with a ton of great dialogue. If there was one thing I'll remember about One Last Thing Before I Go, it's that he moved away from both of those strengths a bit in this one. The disembodied narrator spent a lot of time telling about the inside of the main character's head, which wasn't necessarily the most engaging to spend the majority of the book. Also, except for a few dialo...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I suppose the only reason the book isn't subtitled "Sex sex sexy sexy crazy sex bad sex depressing sex loser sex pity sex sex sex addicts anonymous sexnuts" is because the title was long enough as it was. The book plods along for its first quarter in a most depressing, dejected, aimless manner. I almost put it down. Then, at just past the right moment, the book turns itself around, and veers into a hilarious realm of Radical Honesty (a concept I find fascinating, but won't dare to be a practitio...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Jsavett1 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recently, one of my friends described reading Tropper as being a "vacation." After finishing my second book by him, I find that description incredibly apt: it's a vacation from the vapid prose which pervades our environment, a vacation from the relative stability of my own life, and a vacation from the Hollywood simplicity that characterizes so many of the stories we see in theaters and on TV---One Last Thing Before I Go, like This Is Where I Leave You, SHOULD be a soul crushingly sad story abou...more Recently, one of my friends described reading Tropper as being a "vacation." After finishing my second book by him, I find that description incredibly apt: it's a vacation from the vapid prose which pervades our environment, a vacation from the relative stability of my own life, and a vacation from the Hollywood simplicity that characterizes so many of the stories we see in theaters and on TV---One Last Thing Before I Go, like This Is Where I Leave You, SHOULD be a soul crushingly sad story about a totally unsympathetic deadbeat dad. Instead, the sadness is buoyed by a deep, developed sense of humor, and the humanity of our one named narrator, Silver, shines through like the second place medal he is: not ideal, but he doesn't finish last.

There's not a page in this book that doesn't contain a line worth highlighting (or Post-It flagging or margin writing about---whichever is your mode of nerdy excitement marking). Tropper describes an overly eager friend of Silver's as slipping his business cards into people's hands "like a reverse pick-pocket." And here's his brilliant paragraph about the annoyingly verbose popularity of cigar smoking among men of a certain age:

"Cigars are all the rage these days, on both sides of the marital divide. The married men smoke them to somehow feel less fenced in by their lives, the divorced men smoke them to stave off the encroaching desolation on sad Sunday evenings, and neither group can shut up about it. Because of a tossed salad of latent Freudian inadequacy issues, middle aged men will perform fellatio on a clump of cured leaves and somehow feel more like men because of it, which if nothing else, is a colossal triumph of marketing. And you would think that, phallic or not, a habit that involves plugging your mouth would be a quieter affair, but you would be wrong."

Vacation indeed.

The most common criticism of the book, which I don't share, concerns its rather ambiguous ending. I will NOT spoil anything here, but will simply state my contention that its not ambiguous at all; Silver's central conflict, or rather, his existential goal, is spelled out by him in list form several times throughout the book. Readers may decide whether he can successfully check off each item, but this reviewer believes that decision is quite UNambiguously clear.

The only very minor criticism I have of this book is that Tropper's insistence that Silver is a loser and a sort of reverse-Midas is repetitious at best, and somewhat unbelievable at worst. Most of the infamous acts which earned him this reputation take place BEFORE the action of this book, and I find it difficult to believe that the incredibly thoughtful and self-aware Silver as described in One Last Thing Before I Go could be the same man responsible for those failures.

This is a must read for fiction fans and for those who enjoyed This Is Where I Leave You; Silver's story finishes a very close second.(less)

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Jan 16, 2013 Jason Porter rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A down-on-his luck drummer from a one-hit wonder rock band decides not to have the surgery that could save his life when he is diagnosed with a heart problem. Silver is a mess - his ex-wife is getting married, his teenaged daughter is pregnant, and the small circle of friends with whom he lives at the divorcee's apartment building is struggling with the challenges of middle age.

It is a premise that doesn't immediately strike one as humorous or light-hearted, but Tropper's gift as a humorist com...more

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Dec 03, 2012 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

I will admit, when I first started listening to this audiobook, I was ready to turn it off. Drew Silver leads a very sad and depressing life. He was a drummer with a one-hit wonder band. His fleeting fame cost him his wife and daughter, and he now lives in an apartment building, the Versailles, full of sad divorced men like himself. They are a very sad lot also with depressing stories of lost families and lost self-worth. A lonely life filled with no love and a distance from all of his family me...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Booklover, Indianapolis rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-romance, read-in-2012, wanted-to-read-but-disappointed

(December) 2.5* I wanted to love this book. I loved This Is Where I Leave You and really enjoyed How To Talk To A Widower, so I was looking forward to another great read with this book. Alas, it was not to be. It was hard to find anyone to like in this book. The ex-wife - blech. The knocked up daughter - too bitchy and too full of herself. And Silver - well, he was just such a loser - for no reason. Not sure exactly what he did to support himself other than live off residuals of his one-time hit...more

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Nov 08, 2012 Bessie James rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved this book. It hooked me in from the get-go. I've never read anything by Tropper, but I'm going to put him on the top of my to-read list. He has that rare knack of making dialogue drive the story rather than plodding exposition. He doesn't use a lot "he said/she said" but you almost always know who is speaking -- something a lot of aspiring writers and even some very accomplished ones could learn from.

There are many reviews here that will give the basic plot outlines, so I won't be repeti...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Mary Lou rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. One Last thing Before I Go is a poignantly comedic novel about atoning for failures and making a better future. Writer Jonathan Tropper creates authentic characters and a plot that shows the complexities of relationships among women and men as marital partners and parents. Although he makes it clear that failure to communicate is the major issue, he also depicts the inhibiting issues.

Protagonist Drew Silver not only did not recover from his short-lived career as the writer of a one hit rock song...more

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Oct 07, 2012 Randi Reisfeld rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not nearly as good as This Is Where I Leave You and How To Talk To A Widower. A lot of "telling, not showing." And the telling was told over and over and over again. Silver--he's called by his last name only, for no apparent reason--is a middle-aged loser. Once a rockstar (albeit a drummer and it was only one song), he's now middle-aged, lumpy, regretful, guilty, grieving all he's lost -- wife and daughter, since he apparently walked away from them -- and, uh, did we mention regretful? Now, he's...more

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Sep 28, 2012 marg rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Whatever, Tropper. I'll give you this much - you did deviate in your usual style by writing in third person, and your character was not your usual 'loser but in a charming way' since this guy was just a loser, and while you still objectified women a'plenty you at least threw in the condescending 'woman that he was into was NOT the hottest bridesmaid, she wasn't even second, she came in third (this is almost a direct quote) so don't you now think I am enlightened for being willing to settle??'......more

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Sep 27, 2012 Kita rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love Jonathan Tropper. Very few books have ever made me laugh out loud, and most of them have been his (This is Where I Leave You is my favorite of his). Even when his books are imperfect, they remind me of watching a favorite sit-com - you love the characters so much, despite and maybe because of their flaws, and are rooting for them from the start, and you fall so easily into the story, that it's hard not to enjoy the experience.

That said, this book definitely has some flaws. For starters,...more

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Sep 26, 2012 Sheela rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In truth, my rating for this book is between a 3& a 4. My all time favorite Tropper book is this is where I leave you.

Thankfully, Tropper presents himself as less of a mysoginist - his main character is a one hit wonder rocker who in his all encompassing quest for fame wrecks his family and thus ruins his life. We find him in a dwelling off the highway that is known as a place where divorced men go to decay and live on the fringes of the families that they have lost to 2nd marriages.

Silver,...more

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Sep 21, 2012 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed this book, although it took me awhile to get into. I am a big Jonathan Tropper fan, and although I don't think this particular book was one of my favorites of his, it is still definitely worth a read. Mr. Tropper has such a deft touch with both prose and dialogue, and he is brilliant at creating flawed, unlikeable characters and then somehow making the reader root for them anyway - not even in spite of their flaws, but frankly BECAUSE of them. I'm on a big Friday Night Lights kick righ...more

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Sep 18, 2012 Sarah Eiseman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I’m still not sure how I managed to read this book in three days with the current level of reading and writing that I’m required to do in my MLS program, but somehow the awesomeness of this book would not be denied. Jonathan Tropper is one of the only male authors that, without question, I will make time to read. His books are edgy, raw, and have a certain reality that I find few authors can pull off.

In this novel, we meet Drew Silver, known as Silver throughout the book, even to his daughter, C...more

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Sep 18, 2012 Lori rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: what-i-ve-read

This book was a pleasant surprise. Usually i hate these kinds of novels about clueless men who have disappointed everyone around them and don't have the brains to be grateful for the wonderful things and people in their lives. But Tropper did a great job of making the supporting cast so wonderful I wanted to hang out with them, and eventually you see Silver through their eyes and realize why they keep tolerating and forgiving him. A character like this can easily become so unlikeable you don't w...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Drew Silver is a 44 year old man, the former drummer for a one-hit band that fails when its front man launches a successful solo career. Silver, as he is known to friends and family, lives off of his residuals, weekly sperm donations, and the few weddings and bar mitvah gigs he lines up. He resides at the Versailles, a drab furnished apartment house that has become "the inevitable destination of all the sad, damaged men of Elmsbrook, banished from their homes in the wake of disintegrating marria...more

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Sep 11, 2012 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The actual story here, in Jonathan Tropper's new novel, One Last Thing Before I Go, is slight. Our protagonist Drew Silver is a middle-aged man, a one-time one-hit-wonder rock star (he was the drummer) whose career, marriage, fatherhood, health, self-respect, relationships with everyone, finances, etc., have all gone down the toilet, and now he lives, wracked with regret, a self-pitying narcissist, with his fellow divorced men in a depressing monthly-rate hotel called Versailles in some dreary n...more

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Sep 10, 2012 Lorraine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: z2012, american

Washed-up drummer, dead-beat dad Silver decides to die. The next week or two forces him to interact with his family, especially his 18 yr old daughter.

Tropper has a way with dialogue -- the chapters that are solely dialogue are some of my favourites. It's pithy and emotional and so much gets said in so few words. If he and Aaron Sorkin got together, wow.

All the characters are characters, they are interesting and complex. There's heartache and laughter in the wit of the writing. The emotions des...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Jamie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As a long time Tropper reader, I appreciated the growth in "One Last Thing Before I Go." For the first time, the main character wasn't a rakish man child returning home to a family/town that no longer had faith in him. Instead, the main character is, quite simply, a loser.

Drew Silver has gone from a married father with a promising music career with a hit song to allowing his life to devolve into a divorced absentee father hitting up the local spank bank for cash in between stints playing weddin...more As a long time Tropper reader, I appreciated the growth in "One Last Thing Before I Go." For the first time, the main character wasn't a rakish man child returning home to a family/town that no longer had faith in him. Instead, the main character is, quite simply, a loser.

Drew Silver has gone from a married father with a promising music career with a hit song to allowing his life to devolve into a divorced absentee father hitting up the local spank bank for cash in between stints playing weddings so he can pay the rent for his apartment at the depressing Versailles complex, home of dozens of similar sad sacks. The action begins when his 18-year-old valedictorian daughter comes over to tell him she's pregnant. When he asks why she's telling him, she bluntly says she isn't concerned about disappointing him.

Of course, that depressing tone doesn't pervade the rest of the book, even if Silver soon finds out - talk about a double whammy - that he has a heart condition that will kill him if he doesn't have an operation. The question becomes does he want to have the operation? He finds himself starting to connect a bit with Casey after half a decade of their relationship circling the drain. He starts to feel, in that cliched way, a bit more alive when facing death.

What I liked about "One Last Thing Before I Go":

1. Jonathan Tropper's voice. I've been a fan since his first novel, and I find him to be an easy fun voice to follow. He's an American Nick Hornby - though I'm finding I'm enjoying Tropper's latest works much more than Hornby's.
2. For the first time that I can recall, he doesn't write this in first person. For the first time, we get to hear the thoughts of those around the protagonist - Casey and her mother Denise get several interludes. It's not always perfect, but it was a surprising change.
3. Tropper writes better than most about friendship - specifically male friendship - and about the complexities of sex in modern society.

What I didn't like:

1. I'm so tired of books ending on ambiguous notes. Too many novels lately end where you just have to decide what happened. Come on already.
2. In the end, I didn't really LIKE Silver. I don't have to like main characters all the time, but there are some books where it definitely helps. I should have liked him more, but I didn't.
3. I held this up against some of Tropper's other works, and it just never entertained and impressed me the way "Plan B" and "This is Where I Leave You" did.

In the end? Three stars. I liked it well enough. I'm happy to have had it to read. Not something I want to put in other people's hands like his previous books.(less)

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Sep 02, 2012 Jess rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"One Last Thing Before I Go" stars lovable loser Drew Silver, or Silver, as everyone calls him. Silver is a drummer in a band that has one great hit before its lead singer moves on to a successful solo career. Silver's personal and professional life never recover. When we meet Silver, his ex-wife, Denise, is about to be remarried to a guy "Silver can't quite bring himself to hate." Silver's 18-year-old daughter has just announced to him that she's pregnant. He lives in a dumpy apartment inhabite...more

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Aug 29, 2012 John Luiz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Thank God for Jonathan Tropper. He's one of my favorite authors and you can reliably depend on him to put out an entertaining novel every couple of years. This one lives up to his lofty standards. It follows his usual storyline of someone in a crisis wisecracking their way through all of his troubles and managing to make a worse mess of things before they finally set their lives straight. Our protagonist here is Silver, a drummer for a now defunct one-hit-wonder band, who's getting by with work...more Thank God for Jonathan Tropper. He's one of my favorite authors and you can reliably depend on him to put out an entertaining novel every couple of years. This one lives up to his lofty standards. It follows his usual storyline of someone in a crisis wisecracking their way through all of his troubles and managing to make a worse mess of things before they finally set their lives straight. Our protagonist here is Silver, a drummer for a now defunct one-hit-wonder band, who's getting by with work in a wedding band and living in a condo development where divorced men go after they've been banished by their wives.

Silver discovers he has a life-threatening tear in his aorta, and while an operation could save him, he puts the operation off while considering whether his life is worth living. He lost the great love of his life, who's now planning to marry a great guy, and his Princeton-bound daughter, whom he neglected for years, has gotten herself pregnant. It's hard to believe that anyone not in a serious depression - and Silver clearly isn't - wouldn't immediately jump at a chance to save their lives, but if you play along with that premise, Tropper does a great job of tracking how Silver discovers whether life is worth continuing, even after he has disappointed everyone he cared about.

Silver is a lout - and it can be a little hard to sympathize with him for what an absentee father he was during his daughter's formative years, particularly since his ex-wife wasn't the acrimonious type that made every interaction a bitter face-off. But as he often does, Tropper makes his irresponsible characters lovable by having them always disarm anyone who's angry with them. Anytime anyone here lets Silver know what an a-hole he is, his response is always, "I know and I agree."

The dialogue, per usual, is fast and fun, even though it does strain credulity a little bit that every character here has a black belt in smart-alecky repartee. As one example, when Silver introduces himself to Lily, a folk singer he has a crush on, the exchange goes: Silver: "I'm not good at this." Lily: "What?" S: "At talking to you." L: "A lot of people aren't good at talking to me. You should meet my parents." S: "I don't think I'm ready for that kind of commitment."

Another standard element is the fight scene between two guys who aren't really good at fighting and who stumble their way through an awkward mashing of bodily parts - and here the confrontation between Silver and his ex-wife's new fiancé is played to full comic effect.

There are also a lot of observations about the peculiar absurdities of human nature, and while these aren't the profound, unexpected insights you might get in a Robert Cohen novel because Tropper focuses on the more clichéd aspects of humanity - like middle-aged men's fascination with the beauty of college girls - it's amazing how much fresh insight he can provide on well-worn topics.

He also may over rely on a trick - Silver often has interior dialogue that reveals in embarrassing detail his feelings for a particular person and the secrets they've shared with him - and then after we've been given it as interior thoughts, he discovers he's said it out loud and embarrassed himself and everyone who heard it. It's supposed to be a condition of his aortic tear, I don't know if such a condition exists where someone would be unaware that they're speaking, but it happens about five times or more in the novel.

I recognize that these credulity-straining tricks are the stock-in-trade of comic novels. True to the comic genre, Tropper keeps things like even in the most intense moments. When Silver accompanies his daugther to the clinic because she is considering getting an abortion, they're both emotionally overwrought but they trade witty barbs in the waiting room -- not something most fathers and daughters would be capable of in that difficult of a situation.

In the final analysis, Tropper's books are highly readable and entertaining because his exceptional talent is evident on every page. His descriptions are always dead on and inventive, like "The shop is run by Pearl, a buxom Hungarian widow in her fifties who applies her makeup with a paintbrush and whose every move is punctuated by the rustle of nylons rubbing together and the Christmas jingle of a thousand golden bangles" or "She is a drab sliver of a woman, with paper-thin lips and the harried expression of someone who has long since resigned herself to being the only competent person on the planet."

When Silver's family decides to stage an intervention to convince him he should get the needed operation, his successful brother offers a moving portrait of how much he misses the camaraderie of their younger days and how he assumed they had recaptured that closeness in the years right after Silver's divorce when he would pay him regular visits - it's a moving sentimental passage that gets immediately turned on its head when Silver reveals he stopped coming because his brother's attempt to welcome him into the embrace of his intact family actually felt to him like a deliberate attempt to rub his nose in the fact that his brother had made a much happier life for himself. It's a brilliant 180 turn that only someone with Tropper's talents could pull off.

As other reviewers have noted, the exchanges between Silver and his teenaged daugther, Casey, are hearfelt. There are a lot of sentimental moments -- and perhaps one that ODs on sentiment (a friend of Silver's at the home for discarded husbands reunites with his estranged son while he's undergoing chemotherapy), the other family exchanges are moving without going over the top. I particularly liked the passages in which Silver's father, a rabbi, takes him on his rounds of overseeing a bris, a bar mitzvah, a death and a wedding to help reignite Silver's passion for life.

I always grab Tropper's novels as soon as they're available. I look forward to his next one, and it'll be interesting to see how his talents translate onto the small screen with the debut next year of the Cinemax show, Banshee, he's been working on with fellow author David Schickler. (less)

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Aug 26, 2012 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Drew Silver is the former drummer for a one hit wonder band whose life has fallen apart following the demise of his band. He's living in a dismal building full of fellow divorced men, his ex-wife Denise is getting married to a doctor, his daughter Casey is a stranger who just found out she's pregnant, and Silver has just found out he will die if he doesn't get a heart operation. His decision to NOT get the operation drives the narrative of One Last Thing Before I Go as Silver tries to figure out...more

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About Jonathan Tropper

Jonathan Tropper is the author of Everything Changes, The Book of Joe , which was a Booksense selection, and Plan B. He lives with his wife, Elizabeth, and their children in Westchester, New York, where he teaches writing at Manhattanville College. How To Talk To A Widower was optioned by Paramount Pictures, and Everything Changes and The Book of Joe are also in development as feature films.

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“Forgiveness has its comforts, but it can never give you back what you've lost.” — 5 people liked it

“Silver is forty-four years old, if you can believe it, out of shape, and depressed—although he doesn’t know if you call it depression when you have good reason to be; maybe then you’re simply sad, or lonely, or just painfully aware, on a daily basis, of all the things you can never get back.” — 3 people liked it

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