155. Everything Changes
Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Recommended by:
Author: Jonathan Tropper
Genre: Fiction, Humor
352 pages, published March 28, 2006
Reading Format: Book
Summary
Everything Changes tells the story of Zachary King. In his appearance to the outside world, Zack has it all. A steady, well-paying job, a rent-free luxurious Manhattan apartment, and an engagement to Hope, who is beautiful, smart, and from a wealthy family. However, as the wedding day looms, Zack finds himself haunted by the memory of his best friend, Rael, killed in a car wreck two years earlier—and by his increasingly complicated feelings for Tamara, the beautiful widow Rael left behind. When Norm, Zack’s unemployed, freewheeling, Viagra-popping father, resurfaces after a twenty-year absence, looking to make amends, Zack begins to question everything in his life.
Quotes
“You can never totally hate someone who sang you to sleep like that, can you? Who calmed you down and eased your fears. You can feel angry and betrayed, but some part of you will always love them for being there on those scary nights, for giving you a place to run to where your nightmares couldn’t follow, the one place where you could descend finally into slumber knowing, at least for the time being, that you were completely safe.”
“The really good liars, the true grandmasters of bullshit, are so damn convincing because they actually believe their own lies.”
“Few things are more pathetic than an unemployed man with a business card.”
“it’s a point of pride whenever you can point to the ways in which you’re avoiding your progenitor’s defective character. I’m not like him becomes your mantra,”
“Things have been going too well for me lately. I feel like I have some bad karma headed my way.” Tamara frowns at me as she leads me toward the dressing rooms. “That’s a pretty dire outlook on life,” she says. “What’s the point in working to be happy if you’re going to be constantly looking over your shoulder, wondering when it’s time to pay the bill?”
“The reason wisdom is meant to be imparted is because you acquire it only after it’s too late to apply to yourself.”
“I wake up like this, this sense that I’ve somehow been transported to an alternate universe where my life took a left instead of a right because of some seemingly insignificant yet cosmically crucial choice I’ve made, about a girl or a kiss or a date or a job or which Starbucks I went into…something.”
My Take
Having previously read and thoroughly enjoyed several books by Jonathan Tropper (The Book of Joe, This is Where I Leave You, and One Last Thing Before I Go), I had high hopes for Everything Changes. I was not disappointed. Tropper has a knack for creating colorful, sometimes eccentric (and always entertaining) characters that retain enough of their humanity that they seem like real people. He then puts them in situations that combine pathos with the outlandish. The result is often extremely humorous with an undercurrent of the poignant. Everything Changes hits all of these notes and it was a pleasure to read.
