Plan B
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The heartwarming debut novel by the New York Times bestselling author of This is Where I Leave You and One Last Thing Before I Go.
Turning thirty was never supposed to be like this. Ten years ago, Ben, Lindsey, Chuck, Alison, and Jack graduated from New York University and went out into the world, fresh-faced and full of dreams for the future. But now Ben's getting a divorce; Lindsey's unemployed; Alison and Chuck seem stuck in ruts of their own making; and Jack is getting more publicity for his cocaine addiction than his multimillion-dollar Hollywood successes.
Suddenly, turning thirty-- past the age their parents were when they were born, older than every current star athlete or pop music sensation-- seems to be both more meaningful and less than they'd imagined ten years ago.
Plan B, Jonathan Tropper's wonderful debut novel, is about more than friendship, love, celebrity, addiction, kidnapping, or even turning thirty-- it's a heartfelt comic riff on what it means to be an adult against your will, to be single when you thought you'd have a family, to discover you are not, in fact, immortal, and to learn that Star Wars is as good a life lesson today as it was when you were six years old.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The title of Tropper's debut novel refers to the madcap plot at its center, and also to one of the book's primary themes--that life rarely works according to plan. Nobody knows this better than Ben, the narrator, who wants to be a novelist, but finds himself at age 30 stuck in a low-level publishing job in New York City, on the cusp of a sad and bloodless divorce, and envious of his closest college friends: Lindsey, the spirited ex-girlfriend who's always followed her heart; attorney Alison; surgeon Chuck; and movie star Jack Shaw, who earns $13 million a picture. But Jack, it turns out, is also a cocaine addict whose drug-fueled escapades are increasingly finding their way into the tabloids. When an intervention attempt fails, his friends turn to Plan B: they kidnap Jack and keep him captive in the Catskills until he shakes his habit for good. Of course, holding a mega-celebrity against his will is no simple matter, and complications abound. Jack turns violent, then vanishes, the local-yokel sheriff's department starts poking around and soon enough the FBI and the media are involved. Meanwhile, the remaining friends are forging new bonds (platonic and otherwise) and confronting encroaching fears of aging. Despite Ben's exaggerated Gen-X voice--by turns jaded and facile, glib and bleak--the picaresque plot is diverting in a sitcom kind of way. The characters are unlikely as friends but entertaining as Friends, and Tropper keeps the story moving at a brisk pace with crackling TV dialogue.
Customer Reviews
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The friendships we make through puberty and our college years so often dictate our behavior as young adults leading towards our first major decisions as newly weds and parents. This is a highly entertaining look back at just such a group that reunite to set all their lives straight and once again directing themselves back to a path they had once before set forward on together.
Solid
Love all his books, need more...
Awful
Thank God I read a few of Tropper's other books before this one or I never would have. Granted it's his first one I think and you can tell. Also, to hear these characters whining about turning 30 like its 70 is cringeworthy. Just a terrible outlook on aging and where people think they're supposed to be. Also, one does not "take cocaine". Very uninformed in the party culture as well. I own bars and have never heard of a drink called an apricot sour. Just... Terrible.