Rating: 
Summary: Real World meets Fiction
Review: In accordance with some of the other reviews posted about Plan B, this book deserves attention as well as more than 5 stars.Plan B has a beautiful ensemble of main characters that are really cohesive together, and are written in such a believable way to 'real life' its incredible. Each character shines in their own way, and you'll see a bit of your friends and yourself in everyone. The story centers about four 30 something friends in trying to save a fifth friend from his own destruction, and in doing so discover more about themselves and each other despite being best friends over all these years. What makes this novel so great is the strength of the character's dialogue...I have had these conversations so many times myself, and had the same introspections that the main character Ben reflects upon. Mixed in this tale that spans just a few short weeks is a great sense of humor (much like Nick Hornby's 'High Fidelity' & 'About A Boy'), all too real emotion and self-worth, quirky situations, and a non-stop pace. Every chapter left me begging for more, and I'd really like to see a sequel. This is begging to be made into a TV mini-series or movie. Also, as a person who just turned 30 myself, the references to everything 80's and late 70's is a fun walk down nostalgia lane. There are things discussed within the chapters that brought a smile to my face as I too remember certain songs, shows, events, etc... that were part of my childhood and how I reacted to them in my life. In a nutshell, I think this novel perfectly captures Generation X as we enter our 30's. Great job!
Rating:
Summary: This one has "screenplay" written all over it.
Review: In this era of buddy movies and feel-good groups of friends relating in the post-college world, Jonathon Tropper's "PLAN B" fits right in there with the best of them. Like a postmodern episode of "Friends", Tropper presents his party of five with tongue firmly planted in cheek, and plot delicately balanced between reality and Hollywood. A decade ago, five idealistic friends (Ben, the narrator; Lindsey, his then girlfriend; Chuck, the overweight geek cum womanizer; Alison, the soft-spoken one; and Jack, the all-american boy turned Hollywood superstar) graduated from NYU, rush headlong into the world, only to find, as they turn thirty, that the world has teeth and bites back with a vengeance. Each one seems to have suffered some injustice on their path...and as they converge one fatal summer to intervene in what becomes a comedic and often insightful display of aggressive friendship toward Jack, the more successful, yet most drastically flawed of the group--each learns a valuable lesson about him or herself that carries the story along quickly to its predictable resolution. I found the ending much too tidy and "Hollywood" for my taste, but feel that the writing style, character development, and emotional atmosphere rang true. Tropper delivers, in a loud, clear voice, a delightful work of fiction, from which I learned a little about the world around me, and even a little about myself. This one is highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: New author off to a good start
Review: I purchased 'Plan B' after receiving a spammed e-mail from the author justifying his need for spamming due to being an unknown author who lacks the publicity and clout of other writers. I decided to go out on a limb and purchase his book. Afterall I could sympathize with his predicament. John Grisham sells Milions of books because he has an established name in the industry. Although I think he is the most overrated writer of the millennium. What I enjoyed about 'Plan B' is angst the main charactor Ben goes through when turning 30. Being in my early 30's I related a great deal to a number of his statements and observations stated throughout the book. The book was easy to follow and contained some very pointed and witty writing. One component which I felt was weak in the story was Jack the movie star. His friends put their lives and careers on the line for their friend. I honestly did not feel terribly sympathetic or compassionate towards him. Perhaps if the author wrote more flashback scenes citing and defining the background of their friendship, it would help me understand why they risked so much for this friend. Sure this book may lack the philosophical or symbolic depth of such books as'Xen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance", but it provided a great deal of entertainment from a person whom indeed shaped their life in the '80's. I look forward to the next book!
Rating: 
Summary: a conformist's tale
Review: I liked this book, but then I like some television shows and Hollywood movies too. The five protagonists in <i>Plan B</i> are straight out of central casting, as they say. I found myself wondering if Jonathan Silverman (who even went to NYU and played an aspiring writer on a very bad TV show) is too old to play Ben now. Probably not. Ben is the narrator of this well-written and entertaining, but not particularly deep book and I have a feeling that he is supposed to be a likeable guy, but I didn't like him or particularly respect him. What kind of guy graduates from college with an English degree and wants to be a writer, but seems totally oblivious to the existence of any reference that doesn't refer to mainstream television or Hollywood movies. Ben is desperate to be part of the status quo. In college he and his friends abjure involvement in the Greenwich Village culture scene of avante garde music, experimental theater and independent films and cling tightly to the suburban banalities of their upbringing. And now Ben desperately wants the suburban banalities that he feels he is <i>supposed</i> to have at 30: a fulfilling and remunerative career, a loving wife and child and maybe even a house in the 'burbs (like his older brother has). One of their little group from college has an out of control cocaine addiction. The Fab Four kidnap him and bring him to a country home on a lake in the Catskills. While they keep watch over him, they talk about LIFE. These are well written passages and they do shed light on the poverty of the inner lives of people who don't take chances and never leave the mainstream of American culture. It hardly ruins the book to say that Ben ends up happily teaching English in a rural public high school (without ever having earned a teaching certificate!) with the home, loving wife and baby he always wanted. This will make a pleasant movie and perhaps restart the career of Jonathan Silverman.
Rating:
Summary: A modern book worth reading.
Review: When my old writing mentor asks me what I am reading and I tell him I am reading either Jay McInerney or one of the novelists from the lost generation. I recently told him I was reading Jonathan Tropper. This book has a great plot and and is an enjoyable read. There are funny moments but it is not parallelled by authors such as McInerney or Flannery O' Connor. The ending is too wrapped up. Maybe I am a minimalist but I feel after reading this book that I was given the Scooby-doo scenario. You will enjoy reading this book, but I warn this is not for the people who enjoy the minimalist flow or those who are fans of the weathered humorist. It has it's funny moments but the ending is forced. This seems like the type of book that should have been written in screenplay format first if you know what I mean. (This book will no doubt spawn a film version.)
Rating:
Summary: Non-stop reading!
Review: I happened to find this book 3 months before my 30th birthday. Not only was the timing appropriate, but I completely related to the characters and their experiences. I started reading one week when I was really busy, and ended up neglecting my personal life completely when I couldn't put the book down!
Rating:
Summary: Help?... Help yourself, with a little help from your friends
Review: Jonathan Tropper e-mailed me a message some months ago, after reading some critique of mine and told me I would like his book. I got it, after a while. And I read it between two writing assignments, and I loved it. First it starts slowly, a little bit messy, but when the speed catches up then momentum follows. It is full of humor, absolutely bracing about humanity. Five friends from high school and college all turn thirty the same year and all have to reexamine their lives to find their real perspectives. One is an actor in Hollywood and is on drugs. He is the pretext for the others to come together : they want to help him out of drugs, but in fact they all have second motivations, more personal and interested. So there they go. They save him and they save every one of themselves. But the book is a lot more interesting than just this emotional and pathetic situation. It is a deep questioning of turning thirty in our society today for the post baby-boom generation, also for the post-Vietnam war generation. They don't seem to have any kind of great and humane cause to support. They seem to be totally penned up in their present, in their world. No echo from the outside world, from the non-American world. And can college-and-more-educated people find a motivation in life that can guide them up to death ? Strange enough it is to serve themselves by serving others. To serve those you love, first and for all, even if you endanger your own present by doing so. To serve the children they teach (two of them turn teachers at that fair age of thirty). To serve others by creating myths, and romance, and adventure, and action, and fiction, be they high on books or articles or films. To serve others by being the best doctor and surgeon available at any time to cure them, heal them, clean them, etc. And there is a last level which is romantic more than anything else : to go away from the big apple and to the mountains, back to nature. The point of view of the narrator in the book, Ben, prevents any deep exploration of the fantasms and hallucinations our generations cannot live without. Tropper is not a Stephen King. But he does not want to be. If he had been he would have told the story from the drug-addict's point of view, which he carefully avoided. So the book is humorous, funny, thrilling, caustic even, but intimate, private, sentimental without being sentimentalese, heart-warming and mind-catching. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities IX and II
Rating:
Summary: It's about time someone wrote a novel like this!
Review: Thanks to Mr. Tropper for writing this wonderful novel! We need more books like this in the marketplace. Too often I am forced to read either a coming of age novel about someone who was a teenager in the 50's , or a contemporary novel about characters whose children are grown. So few novels deal with the emotions and stresses of life in your early thirties. There was a TV program on for a short time called "Wasteland" and one of the characters was working on a thesis about the "second coming of age". I think that is what Mr. Tropper's novel is about. For those of us in our thirties, we have spent most of our twenties confused and wondering why things didn't turn out the way that we dreamed when we were in college. This novel addresses those feelings in an exceptional story. The scene where the narrator was attending the funeral of the next door neighbor, and he compared the life that the deceased had lived to what kind of life he had lived -- it was a great turning point for the character. Tropper expertly let us see through his characters that it isn't important so much what we do, but how we treat people when we go about whatever it is that we are going to do.
Rating:
Summary: the perfect generation x novel
Review: This book was a wonderful start to what will clearly be a long career for gifted newcomer Jonathan Tropper. Having grown up in the seventies and eighties the pop culture references were nostalgic and funny and the fast paced dialogue was fresh and original. Once I started reading I couldn't put it down. I found the narrative was very compelling as I read about five friends sorting through many of the same problems that my group of friends experience. I can't wait for the movie
Rating:
Summary: Plan B Delivers!
Review: This book has a great plot device, involving the kidnapping of a movie star by his friends, and the story is moved along by truly witty dialogue between those friends as they deal with all of their fears and worries at turning thirty. Being thirty-two, I related to all of the angst that Ben, the narrator was going through,and the interplay between the friends really reminded me of my own friends. Tropper has a great ear for dialogue, and a fun, unpretentious style that makes you feel like you're listening to a friend of yours tell you a story. I also echo the sentiment of many of the reviews below, that this book would make a great movie for the Matt Damon/ Ben Affleck set. I look forward to that possibility, as well as more books from Mr. Tropper.
| 
