The Book of Joe

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Novel
Review: The Book of Joe is an amazing book; it's smart, funny, and deeply compassionate - the kind of book you want all of your friends to read, but you're reluctant to lend them your copy because you've grown attached to it.

The Book of Joe is about a writer who returns to the hometown he left seventeen years earlier, then trashed in a hit novel. The writer comes home to discover that the people in the town are real - not the characters he imagined and can control. And these people - family, friends, enemies, and a woman he still loves - make the writer confront not only themselves, but the person he was seventeen years before.

There is a great deal to this book, but suffice to say that it will move everyone who reads it. For anyone who is startled to realize that seventeen years before they actually already were a formed person, The Book of Joe will especially touch a nerve. For anyone who, like the protagonist, came of age in the Eighties, The Book of Joe may well become an anthem.

Rating:
Summary: Somewhere between Perrotta and Chabon...
Review: The Book of Joe manages to be both hilarious and heartwarming at the same time. I picked it up because Plan B, Tropper's first novel, had been such a fun read, and was fankly surprised by how much I started caring about the characters. Joe Goffman returns to the town he trashed in his bestselling novel, and the reaction of the town, his family, old friends and his old girlfriend are what drive this compelling story. The book is being adapted for the screen by Warner Brothers, and if they can capture the essence of this book, I think, they'll have a major hit on their hands. Tropper writes with a clear and very funny voice, and then, all of a sudden, you come across a sentence so perfect, almost poetic, that you find yourself rereading the entire paragraph. His voice perfectly captures the irony and pathos of a thirty-something man trying to make sense out of lost loves and age old wounds. At times I laughed out loud, and at times I had tears in my eyes. If you like anyone from Nick Hornby to Michael Chabon to John Irving to Tom Perrotta, you will love The Book of Joe.

Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining
Review: The Book of Joe was a great book to read. It has all of the elements of a novel that make you wish the book was longer. While enjoying the reading, you will lament that there are fewer and fewer pages left to read as you progress through the book. The characters are well developed; very early on in the book the reader feels as part of the story, easily identifying with the people and places in the book. The writing style and main character remind me of Nick Hornby novels which I greatly enjoyed.

Rating:
Summary: Eloquent and Meaningful, Hilarious and Heartbreaking
Review: The riches you earn and rub in the face of all those who've wronged you in the past only go so far. Sooner or later in this small world, you will have to face those people again. This is the lesson Joe Goffman learns early in Jonathan Tropper's hilarious and heartbreaking novel THE BOOK OF JOE.

Goffman earned his right to be hated by penning a bestselling fiction named after his conservative hometown of Bush Falls, a once textile and retail outlet rich Connecticut town that has fallen on hard times. Behind the high moral standards, the churchgoing, the wealth, the cherished Cougars high school basketball team, romantic woodlands and falls, lurked the ugly truth that a once angry Joe Goffman embellished for his fiction debut, attracting hundreds of thousands of dollars from both New York publishing and Hollywood, leaving Joe with everything at the lonely top and nobody to talk to except his slick literary agent and a psychotic ex-girlfriend from the Big Apple.

Struggling with his hollow life in Manhattan and his failed attempt at postmodern fiction as a follow-up, Joe learns that his father Arthur is in a coma and he must return to the place, and the deep wounds, he exposed. Yet literary and financial successes have done little to massage the ego of Joe, who believes deep down that he has betrayed his family and friends and is undeserving of his posh apartment and Mercedes. So Joe refuses to defend himself back in Bush Falls when he faces fallen basketball star and brother Brad Goffman and his cheerleader wife Sean Tallon, miscreant "Mouse" Muser, Coach Dugan, lusty Lucy Haber and a host of other bitter folks and sports fanatics who unwillingly graced the pages of Bush Falls.

More terrifying are the ghosts Joe encounters in memory, that of his suicidal mother and of his close friend Sammy Haber, both victims of depression and Bush Falls. There to carry Joe through the wilderness of remorse and embarrassment is old friend Wayne Hargrove, whose love affair with Sammy the summer before senior year cost Sammy his life, Bush Falls the championship, and Joe nearly everything. With Wayne harboring an even more devastating secret, the author steps into a Michael Chabon-stylized Themeland with his side-splitting humor, akin to WONDER BOYS and homosexual undertones reminiscent of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY and THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH.

Yet Tropper distinguishes himself nicely as he revisits Joe's own 1980s at Bush Falls High. The author's engaging conversational tone and gift for character inflection make for some of THE BOOK OF JOE's funniest moments, especially during the tense moments at Mercy Hospital and on the roof of the old school. Witty lines such as "What [the novel] needs, I suspect, is to be taken out back and given the Old Yeller treatment," and "We sit quietly as the conversation limps off to wherever it is conversations go to die" pepper the novel and delight the many difficult scenes when Joe is feeling his worst.

As Bush Falls residents bombard Joe's childhood home with rejected copies of the novel, Joe realizes that what he dished out was just waiting to grow and come back to him one-hundredfold. Joe begins to find redemption only as he attempts to rekindle his love for high school sweetheart Carly Diamond, who stands by Joe as he deals with the most difficult challenge he must face --- understanding that forgiveness is the only way to heal the past.

Eloquent and meaningful, THE BOOK OF JOE is a worthwhile offering from an author who has the talent and market insight to pen a bestseller of his own.

--- Reviewed by Brandon M. Stickney

Rating:
Summary: What a Great Read
Review: This is a fabulous book. The dialogue is witty and the characters wonderfully drawn out. I heartily recommend this novel to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Book of Joe
Review: This is a very heartwarming story, that manages to stay "real" in the sense that it covers the most emotional events in life without degenerating into over-sentimentality. The novel is classic 30-something fiction -- following the classic story arch that you've seen in many different models ranging from the insipid (Sweet Home Alabama) to dark comedy (Grosse Point Blank). The somewhat intellectual misfit bolts from small town that he is, he believes, too good for, with not inconsiderable amount of baggage, only to return and find that he was not as grown up as he thought and that you can leave but home never quite leaves you.

There are many interesting twists on the story here; mostly that the protagonist has written a best selling novel about the place he left, in which he torches it with a heavy and at times fair but at others unfair hand. The relationships explored are classic ones, as Joe returns to face his dying father, brother, old girlfried, old coach, first Mrs. Robinson adolescent crush, best friend, and high school bully. Add in a new character -- his brother's son -- to form a new relationship that serves as a the catalyst for the inevitable redemption that follows. The action, and pacing is sort of organized hub-and-spoke style, with Joe as the hub, and these other characters at the end of spokes. In other words, the book is about Joe's evolving relationship with each of these characters -- the "spokes" if you will. But the novel, smartly, also explores relationships of the other characters with each other, as seen through Joe's eyes. His brother and his son; his old coach and his brother; his ex and his best friend. It is these secondary complementary relationships -- the across-the-spokes ones, to keep the metaphor going -- that add a really nice extra layer of texture to this novel.

Joe is exceptionally likeable, and that makes it all work. Not without flaws, but able to understand that point, and seriously desirous of change; it's tough not to root for him. Happily, as noted above, the novel also does not disintegrate into sappiness or easy resolutions, and the novel's final line (spoiler) "maybe," is perfect, in the sense that Tropper merely gives youa hint that things might just work out for Joe, without giving up resolutions too easily or departing from what he's spent 350 pages working at -- convincing his protagonist that successful relationships take work.

There are some things to be critical about. (Hopefully my five stars will make clear that I think these detract from the overall enjoyability of this book only slightly.) First, one of the relationships that seems to motivate much of Joe's thinking and action -- his relationship with the Coach/patriarch of the small town -- is not sufficiently well developed. Joe hates him for a particular event for which the coach deserved to be hated, but of all the Joe relationships in the book, this seems to be one of the ones that is least ripe for extended discussion. But, in fact, it turns out to be the only one that's really resolved before the end of the book. (Other than two that are resolved by death.) The big showdown scene with the coach seems not quite to fit. Second, the book does not *always* avoid over sentimentality. One important scene went over the top for me. Joe brings his AIDS inflicted best friend to play basketball on the last night of his life to the gym where his father also suffered the stroke that killed him. After finding himself on the "exact spot" where his father died, Joe notices that his hands are smudged with ink from the signatures on the basketball signed by the members of his father's glory-days basketball team, and then later that night watches the ink wash down the drain of the shower as he showers with his ex-girlfriend with whom he's about finally to re-consumate his relationship after many years. Tropper hits you over the head not just with the ink metaphor but with a mini-diatribe on the fragility-of-memories message that the washed away ink represents. It was a little too much for me. Third, Joe's perhaps biggest sin from his past relates to his turning his back on a friend, whom he'd made an implicit pact (in the form of accepting overt sexual flirtations from the friend's mother) to protect. Joe doesn't pay enough for this sin, in my opinion, and the events with the mother seem not to fit quite right.

A final word for Bruce Springsteen fans. Springsteen plays a central role in the novel -- his words appear frequently, and even where they do not, fans of his music will see situations and characters from his music (many, very thinly veiled) everywhere in the novel. Joe himself is something of a Springsteen fan, although he admits that his Bruce poster that still hangs in his childhood bedroom was mostly for "credibility." The problem is that Springsteen doesn't fit here. While many of the songs and ideas invoked are from the earnest, irony-free zone that Springsteen fosters, Joe, his childhood friends, and his new friend (his nephew) are more sarcastic, post-modern, ironics. While Joe finds some superficial comparison in Springsteen characters -- pulling out of town full of losers -- that's where the comparison ends. What becomes patently clear about halfway through the novel is that while Tropper himself is undoubtedly a very big Springsteen fan, in this novel with this character, he's trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.

Rating:
Summary: Can't rave enough about this book!
Review: This is one of the most enjoyable books I've read in a very long time. It's laugh outloud funny, cry outloud poignant and well-written besides. Jonathan Tropper can be goofy, but he's also dead-on insightful. (About the women in Joe's hometown: "Cleavage, like the good china, was reserved for special occastions, and even then was displayed sparingly.") It only took the first two paragraphs of this book to grab me, and then, as they say, I could not put it down. Overlook the fact that it's a hardcover (it's much cheaper than most anyhow) and take this one to the beach. I am a bookseller and I can't remember ever being as entertained as I was by The Book of Joe.

Rating:
Summary: Formulaic and overdrawn
Review: This novel never rose above the level of bad sitcom - lusting after a friend's mother, confrtonting the high school friend (now cop) who keeps beating him up, immature relationship with his high school sweetheart. The author definitely relied on very canned lines that sounded like an assignment from a high school lit course. Save your money.

Rating:
Summary: A truckload of sarcasm and humor!
Review: When best selling author Joe Goffman returns to his hometown due to his father's stroke, he ends up getting much more than he expected. It seems that his book, a thinly veiled fictional account of his growing up in the town, had caused a bit of an uproar when it was released. Fortunately for Joe, he was still living in New York City, where his greatest worries were feeling guilty for driving his Mercedes, psycho ex-girlfriends who call just to tell him how much of a jerk he is, and getting advice from his best and only friend Owen, his literary agent.

Joe's return to Hope Falls is anything but dull. While his father's physical condition worsens, he begins to get to know his jock brother Brad and Brad's family a bit better. Joe forms a special bond with Brad's son Jared, a somewhat rebellious teenager who has a penchant for paintball and marijuana. Joe even gets re-acquainted with Carly, his high-school sweetheart and only woman he's ever loved and his best friend Wayne who is dying from AIDS. To top it off, Joel is presented with the opportunity to live out a childhood fantasy with one of his best friend's mom.

Meanwhile, Joe must deal with the wrath of those who were affected by his writing, including an ex-con, a policeman, and the local basketball coach who practically owns the town. When the coach's wife greets Joe with a milkshake poured over his head, he knows he's in trouble. Even the book club gets in on the act by personally dumping their copies of his book on the front lawn. It seems that everyone wants a piece of him.

The Book of Joe is a touching coming-of-age story told with a smidgen of emotion and a truckload of sarcasm and humor. Jonathan Tropper (Plan B) has created a first person narrative that dances back and forth through time, from his Springsteen-inspired teen years, to his unpredictable present, never missing a beat. The Book of Joe is currently in development at Warner Brothers Studios. Let's just hope the movie is as good as the book.

Rating:
Summary: :)
Review: Whoever said you can never go home again was obviously talking about Joe Goffman. Joe left Bush Falls after he graduated from high school. Later he wrote a best-selling autobiographical novel called Bush Falls that was eventually made into a hit movie. To say that the citizens of Bush Falls were mad as heck is an understatement. They even tried to file a class action lawsuit against him. Joe immortalized many of the citizens of Bush Falls in his book and most not in a good way. Joe had a lot of anger towards the town and the people that live there and most of that anger comes across in his often comical and perverted portrayal of the people living in Bush Falls. He never planned on returning home, but life never works out they way you want it. Joe's dad has had a stroke and it is now time for Joe to go home and face the town, his family, and Carly-the only woman he ever loved.

Joe's homecoming is um, well, not a cause to celebrate as far as the town is concerned. Joe is one of the most hated men in town. Old women are throwing milkshakes at him and grown men are taking swings at him, while others seem happy verbally berating him. Joe's answer to everything is to respond with dry, quick-witted humor. The only people in town who seemed to be on Joe's side are his nephew, who helps Joe relive his youth and his best friend who also happens to be an unpopular person in town and just happens to be dying. Carly could be considered another person on Joe's side if he didn't constantly screw up the potential that they have for a future.

The one word I would use to describe this book is Blunt. This book strips away all pretense and packaging and your left with raw emotions. This story makes you laugh and cry at the same time. The reader wants to root for the hero, but at the same time smack him in the head for his behavior. This is an in your face book about both life and death. If I was disappointed with any aspect it would have been the ending. I would love to have known that Joe and Carly had a long happy future together and that Sean payed for his actions.

I understand that this is the author's second book. I have not read his other book and I probably would not have read this one if I had not won it, but I am glad that I did because I not only found a book that I thoroughly enjoyed, but I found an author that I would not hesitate to read again. So, thanks to both Bantam Dell Publishing Group for sending me the book and Jonathan Tropper for writing it.