Rating: 
Summary: Not so good
Review: (...) Its a second rate novel that is trite and follows a formula that has been done before (and done better.) How many stereotypes can the author fit in one book - friend's mother who is the object of his lust, former school mate turned bad cop, gay friend with AIDS. Please.
Rating: 
Summary: What Happens When You Do Go Home Again?
Review: A number of years ago, I was a teacher with student loans to pay, so I got a part time job at a deli. A former classmate, still wearing a jacket with his varsity basketball letter proudly showing for all to see, entered the store. The jacket no longer fit, his build had changed which age tends to do. I said hello and he gave me a look as if to say, "Why should I say hello to a pathetic loser like you?" He then made a comment about how little I accomplished since high school since I must only be slicing turkey breast and roast beef. I wanted to comment but wondered if it was worth it. Perhaps this is why I view Joe Goffman, the main character of THE BOOK OF JOE as almost heroic, as will anyone who felt excluded in high school.In THE BOOK OF JOE, author Jonathan Tropper challenges the expression made famous by Thomas Wolfe's novel of the same name "You Can't Go Home Again." There is no question that Tropper is indebted to Wolfe, retelling the story from a 2004 perspective, albeit with a more sensuous flair than Wolfe's novel. The novel's hero, or anti-hero, depending on the reader's perspective, is named Joe Goffman. Goffman is a successful novelist who wrote a book set in his hometown and based on events of his senior year in high school. The residents of the town look rather buffoonish, naturally take exception to the book and feel humiliated when the book is made into a film. Perhaps the fact that residents in the town know that the tragic events depicted in Goffman's novel are true, it makes matters worse. Eventually Joe has to return to his hometown when his father becomes ill and his reunion with the town's residents, particularly the venerated basketball coach and his players who regard the coach as a god, is at times comical and at other times tragic. Tropper could have succumbed to worn out clichés in the work, but instead masterfully tells the story of a writer who was once an alienated youth who has achieved literary success yet still has to achieve personal satisfaction. Complicated broken family relationships and friendships are explored but never completely solved. People Goffman truly cared about and hurt, either intentionally or unintentionally, reenter his life and he likewise has to deal with the very real pain he has caused. Goffman likewise has struggles with the image he has of his father and finds an unlikely friend and ally in his nephew Jared, perhaps the novel's most endearing character. Tropper deserves praise for the scope of what he has accomplished in this work. Many writers explores aspects of Tropper's book: returning home again, broken relationships, stigmas often attached to sexuality, complex family issues and the like, people constantly reliving the past, and do so well. Tropper is able to interweave all of these complicated issues into a novel that flows beautifully, captures a reader's attention, and holds it. He also describes the "writing life" rather well which I see as a plus. According to the book's jacket, it may soon be released as a film. It will be interesting to see if Hollywood will do the book justice, so I would advise people to read the book quickly.
Rating: 
Summary: "If we wouldn't look down, we'd make it to the other side"
Review: Anyone who has ever lived in a small town, and left it for the big city is really going to appreciate this wonderfully sly, clever and whimsical novel by Jonathan Tropper, where memory is never beholden to chronology. With its duel narrative, switching from the present to the mid nineteen eighties, The Book of Joe tells the story of Joe Goffman, who returns to his hometown of Bush Falls in Connecticut after he learns that his estranged father is in a coma. A scathing and contemptuous novel Joe once wrote afflicts and sours his homecoming; but to make matters worse, the novel has been made into a hit movie, which damns the small mindedness and bigotry of the town. Now thirty four, and living an "empty" life in New York, Joe returns to face the demons of the past and to face his friends and family with whom he hasn't had much to do with for seventeen years. Joe returns to a town that is solidly immersed in recession, with for sale signs on the front lawns, and a sense of desperation in the "quotidian tidiness." And to many of the residents, Joe has done unknowable and irreparable damage to their town, and to their reputations. The local book club throws copies of his book onto his lawn, a customer at the local cafe hurls a milkshake over him, and his childhood sweetheart Carly - with who he is still in love - is angry and resentful at his thoughtlessness in writing the book. Joe faces an uphill battle to reconnect with his brother Brad, and Brad's wife Cindy, but he succeeds forming an adolescent bond with his nephew Jared, and his old friend Wayne, who has returned to Bush Falls from Los Angeles, and who is now suffering from AIDS. Joe has spent so much time re-living and rewriting those years that he can no longer discern "which vignettes are the result of which process." But through his daffy, intuitive literary agent Owen, Joe comes to terms with the fact that he has a compulsive need right past wrongs. As the scattered fragments of Joes past "pop up like Starbucks franchises," he revisits the dreadful dealings of his senior year in nineteen eighty-six, where he discovers sex with Carly, and the fact that, Wayne and Sammy, his two best friends are gay. Joe loved to hang out with Wayne and Sammy, singing the lyrics to the music of Bruce Springsteen, smoking lots of dope, and salivating after Lucy Harber, Sammy's curvaceous and attractive mother. But Joe gradually finds himself becoming embroiled in the sexual politics of the town, as he tries desperately to keep Wayne and Sammy's affair a secret from the small-minded community. Seventeen years later, Joe wants to forgive Bush Falls and particularly his father, but somewhere he blinks and all those years has flown by in an "uneven forgiveness," which has "become septic, like an infection festering inside him." Joe has shed all those who cared about him "like a snakeskin." Joe thinks he's exorcised the demons by writing the book, but on returning to Bush Falls, he realizes that he's only appeased them temporarily. And he wonders how unwittingly he's drifted from the boy he used to be and how little he has to show for it. The last seventeen years seem to have been reduced to this tiny area on the map of his life, "just a little yellow shade on the legend to mark my time away from the falls." Tropper's message is that holding onto anger, in whatever form, is a waste of time, in fact, it's a waste of life. Immensely readable, thoroughly enjoyable, and with a nicely controlled narrative, The Book of Joe never falls into urban cliché or fake sentiment. Although some readers might find the ending a little predictable and contrived - there is the expected death, and also the expected romantic redemption for Joe, the story still remains one of the most entertaining the year. Immensely filmable and beautifully told, it comes as no surprise that the movie rights for this fine novel have been optioned. Mike Leonard May 04.
Rating:
Summary: A quick read that keeps you captivated
Review: As a working mom, I don't have a lot of time to read. When my mother passed this book as said it was a must read I found time! I could not put it down. As a fast reader, I finished it over the weekend. I really enjoyed the story. It was "off the beaten path" of my typical reads, which was even better. It was recommended to my mother from Joe at Chester County Book Company in the Philadelphia area, who never missed on a recommendation. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: First of all, I LOVED Plan B by Mr. Tropper. So, I excitedly forced my book club to read and review Book of Joe. I was surprised at the similarity between Mr. Tropper's two books. (ensemble cast, family disputes, nostolgic circle of friends, trying to reconnect to the past, etc.) But that didn't really bother us, since every good writer has a "formula." Most of us, however, felt the novel was too shallow. The kissing teenager has braces, the local cop is a former sports hero whose father was the town sheriff, the gay guy gets aids, etc. In other words, very very predictable. But the real problem is that Mr. Tropper spends 9/10ths of the book carefully creating this hatred and tension between Joe and everyone else, and then, suddenly, and magically, in the last 5 pages, his brother, the Coach, and his girlfriend, all forgive him and have a hallmark moment. It's like Mr. Tropper ran out of ideas, or was reaching his word-limit and just decided to have a hollywood ending. Mr. Tropper writes beautifully and poetically. It is a shame he has already sold out after only one book.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding New Take On Familiar Plot
Review: First, a bit of context for this review: I have never reviewed a book on Amazon.com before. I had never read anything by Jonathan Tropper before I read The Book of Joe. I teach a creative writing seminar at a midwestern university, and a student of mine dropped this book on my desk one day last week and insisted that I read it. Having just completed the book, I decided to do what I instruct my students to do upon finishing a worthwhile read - put pen to paper and record their personal reactions to the work, before having their views tainted through discussions with others. The plot of this novel is remarkably familiar: The return of the estranged to an unwelcome home. Tropper breaks no new ground as far as the general movement of the story. Despite that, this is an extraordinarily original piece of writing. The characters are wonderfully drawn, most assuredly based on real-life characters in Tropper's life, and the complete believability of even some of the more far-fetched incidents is a credit to the sincerity of the voices Tropper records. In particular, I found the depiction of the coach, which could easily have dipped into the cliche-ridden, to be original, enlightening, and very true. (In fact, just about every character was true.) As I frequently address to my own students, a good piece of fiction makes the reader feel that he or she could enter the story and fit right in. A great piece of fiction makes the reader feel that he or she has already been in the story. The Book of Joe falls into the latter category. I felt like I had witnessed personally the events taking place in the story, and while I don't sympathize with the protagonist quite as much as the author may have intended, I did identify with many of the mixed emotions he experiences throughout. I have recommended The Book of Joe to my students and colleagues as an entertaining novel, and one that exemplifies what a young novelist should aspire to. Certainly, this is the kind of writing Harry Chapin had in mind when he sang: "Strum your guitar, sing it kid.
Just write about your feelings, not the things you never did.
Inexperience, it once accursed me.
But your youth has no handicap, its what makes you thirsty."
Rating:
Summary: Above Average Joe
Review: Hilarious and heartfelt, Joe takes us on a trip down his own personal highway to hell. He returns to his hometown, Bush Falls, where the whole town is enfuriated with him. Fists and milkshakes fly. Copies of his bestselling book, a thinly veiled account of his life in Bush Falls, hit his living room window and litter the front yard. Death, love, paintball, redemption and a big Do-over ensue. I loved Plan B, but this really had my attention from the cover picture on. Keep cranking them out!
Rating:
Summary: Melodramatic
Review: I didn't read the reviews until after I read the book, since I wanted to make up my own mind. I think Publishers Weekly hit it on the head in their review in which the reviewer called the book a sophomore effort that relied too heavily on canned lines and easy melodrama. If this kind of book sounds like something you'd be interested in, do yourself a favor and get it from the library.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly Entertaining
Review: I don't care if others critiqued it as predictable - I really liked everything about this book. All the characters were interesting and I really cared what happened to them and what they'd do next. Ok, I admit it. I wrote a little poem about this book: "Wayne's gonna die and I'm gonna cry on that sad and dismal day. Wayne's gonna die and I'm gonna cry, and there's nothing more to say!" How many books have you read that inspired a little poem (good poem or not)? Read this book, I don't think you'll be sorry.
Rating:
Summary: Pack-Up Your Adjectives
Review: I guess sometimes this is what we have to show for allowing poppy little english grammar ditties to be so catchy. I can see Mr. Tropper as the kind of writer motivated by two things: Schoolhouse Rock and vocab-building page-a-day calendars. The writing here was laughable at times, overly flowing and several syllables longer than needed. The vocabulary used was over the top for what was required, and all the more jarring in that the author tends to use (or wants to use) a seemingly accessible, pop-culture-riddled, casualness to the story-telling. The story itself is ok, though nothing exceptional here. For a better, albeit surreal, look at the "voyage-to-the-hometown-of-renowned-author" genre, try Jonathan Carroll's *The Land of Laughs*.
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