This Is Where I Leave You (Jonathan Tropper)

Après le décès de leur père, les quatre enfants Foxman doivent observer la shiv'ah (to sit shiva en anglais) selon les dernières volontés de celui-ci. Cela faisait longtemps qu'ils ne s'étaient pas réunis de la sorte. C'est pour Jonathan Tropper l'occasion de nous raconter l'histoire de cette famille, de ces trois garçons, de leur sœur, et de leurs parents. La shiv'ah leur permet de se retrouver, de régler leurs comptes, d'y voir plus clair dans leur vie et peut-être de mieux s'accepter les uns les autres. 

Je n'avais pas relu Jonathan Tropper depuis le magnifique The Book of Joe. Je ne sais plus pourquoi j'ai choisi This Is Where I Leave You, mais il se trouve qu'il a été adapté au cinéma et doit sortir en septembre (avec Jason Bateman dans le rôle du héros).

Ce roman, je l'ai trouvé très bon aussi (pas autant que l'autre tout de même). Mais j'ai failli abandonner la lecture plusieurs fois. Au début, Judd Foxman surprend sa femme en pleine action avec son patron (à lui). OK ! Jonathan Tropper s'étend ensuite pendant de longues pages sur tout ce qui passe par la tête de Judd. C'est drôle, mais lassant. Et là, je me suis dit : Et allez, encore un quadra en train de divaguer sur ce qui se passe dans la tête d'un trentenaire. (Vérification faite, Jonathan Tropper avait 39 ans à la sortie du roman.) J'ai tenu bon et ça s'est amélioré. Toutefois, jusqu'à la fin du roman, Jonathan Tropper alterne entre passages intéressants et longueurs, qui ressemblent à une accumulation de faits. Apparemment, il ne sait pas quand s'arrêter. Et le personnage de la sœur n'est vraiment pas très fouillé.

Mais certaines anecdotes m'ont tout de même touchée puisqu'elles sentent bien le drame vécu. Après tout, c'est une histoire de famille. Jonathan Tropper parvient à rendre la situation drôle. Et après avoir bien ri, tu te rappelles que tu ne riais pas autant quand la même chose t'est arrivée. Quel talent quand même. J'ai bien fait de continuer.

Plusieurs extraits :

Là, j'ai éclaté de rire.

On the plus side, she insisted we go home immediately, which got me out of having to attend the interminable services at Temple Israel the following morning, where Cantor Rothman’s slow, operatic tenor makes you want to prostrate yourself on the spot and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

That’s kind of funny, actually, since Dad was not exactly prone to expressing gratitude to his children when he was alive. You were either screwing up, or you were invisible. He was quiet and stern in a way that led you to expect an Eastern European accent. He had soft blue eyes and unusually thick forearms, and when he made a fist it looked like he could punch through anything. He mowed his own lawn, washed his own car, and painted his own house. He did all these things capably, painstakingly, and in a way that silently passed judgment on anyone who paid for someone else to do it. He rarely laughed at jokes, just nodded his understanding, as if it was all pretty much what he’d expected. Of course, there was a lot more to him than that, it’s just that none of it is coming to me right now. At some point you lose sight of your actual parents; you just see a basketful of history and unresolved issues.

Tout le monde n'a pas eu la chance d'avoir Françoise Dolto pour mère.

Someone has gotten my mother started on the topic of toilet training, and the room falls silent as she holds forth. She is considered to be an expert on the topic, and the children of her friends still e-mail and call her to ask for guidance as they struggle to train their children. There is a long and celebrated chapter in Cradle and All in which she basically explains the psychology of crapping. She details the way she trained each of her children, the mistakes she made, and, sparing no scatology, the funny things that happened along the way. Mom draws heavily on her own maternal experience throughout the book, and we are all mentioned by name. There are two pages on Paul’s undescended testicle, a section on Wendy’s late-blooming breasts, and a full chapter on how Mom finally solved my bed-wetting problem when I was six years old. I used to shoplift copies from our local bookstore and toss them out in the Dumpsters behind the Getty station, in an effort to keep the books out of circulation. I was in the sixth grade when my classmates finally discovered the book, and I never heard the end of it. That was the year I learned how to fight.

La famille parfaite

There is an air of striving perfection about this family, evident in Sandra’s expensive-looking haircut and pedicure, Cal’s—for that’s what they call him—diamond-encrusted watch and expensive polo shirt with a golf club logo, in the girls’ smooth, tanned legs dipped into white canvas tennis shoes, their blown hair, their flawless complexions. This isn’t a family, it’s a Christmas card. You can picture the plush carpets of their home in Long Island with views of the Sound, the stonework around the front door, the marble and mirrors in the foyer, the perfectly manicured lawn, the sixty-inch plasma television and leather furniture in the den, the art deco living room that no one is allowed into with shoes, the two-year leases on their matching Lexuses.

None of us makes eye contact. We have pretty much had it with each other. We are injured and angry, scared and sad. Some families, like some couples, become toxic to each other after prolonged exposure.

http://jonathantropper.com/books/this-is-where-i-leave-you/synopsis/

The death of Judd Foxman’s father marks the first time that the entire Foxman family-including Judd’s mother, brothers, and sister-have been together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd’s wife, Jen, whose fourteen-month affair with Judd’s radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public.

Simultaneously mourning the death of his father and the demise of his marriage, Judd joins the rest of the Foxmans as they reluctantly submit to their patriarch’s dying request: to spend the seven days following the funeral together. In the same house. Like a family.

As the week quickly spins out of control, longstanding grudges resurface, secrets are revealed, and old passions reawakened.  For Judd, it’s a weeklong attempt to make sense of the mess his life has become while trying in vain not to get sucked into the regressive battles of his madly dysfunctional family. All of which would be hard enough without the bomb Jen dropped the day Judd’s father died: She’s pregnant.

This Is Where I Leave You is Jonathan Tropper’s most accomplished work to date, a riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind-whether we like it or not.

Titre français : C'est ici que l'on se quitte

Comments

[Theoma]

Exactement ! Le livre de joe est à retenir... La suite... ça se gâte. J'ai même essayé la série tv qu'il a créé, Banshee, un épisode m'a suffit. Le livre de joe, un bon cd de Springsteen, les pieds dans le sable, j'en garde un bon souvenir ! :)

[Shelbylee]

Comme toi, j'avais adoré Le livre de Joe (que je n'ose pas relire d'ailleurs de peur d'être déçue). J'ai lu aussi Tout peut arriver et je l'avais aussi trouvé inégal. Je compte lire celui-ci avant de voir son adaptation !