Plan B : a novel /

If The Big Chill had Gen X angst, you would probably have something like Plan B. It is the story of five friends from college who are turning 30 and struggling with what it means to be an adult. Ben, the narrator, is a frustrated writer and recent divorce; Lindsey, unemployed and afraid of commitment; Chuck, a doctor and unapologetic womanizer; and Alison, a lawyer and unrequitedly in love with Jack, a major movie star and cocaine addict. Afraid that Jack has hit bottom with his drug habit, Ben and his friends decide to help. Plan A is an intervention, and when that fails, they go to Plan B--kidnap Jack and hole up in a cabin in the woods until he goes through withdrawal. Everything goes as planned until Jack escapes. However, Jack's addiction is just a vehicle for Tropper in this debut novel to explore the group's personal demons, failings, and relationships. Moreover, he does it with wit, insight, and a lot of fun cultural references to the '80s. --Carolyn Kubisz

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. Agent, Simon Lipskar. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The background music is decidedly not Marvin Gaye but the tone is definitely The Big Chill. Four college friends launch an unusual reunion in New York City when they kidnap a drug-addicted friend. The plan, resorted to when Plan A failed, is to get their good friend and now movie star Jack Shaw to come clean long enough to get his life back on track. Given that life is not exactly on track for any of them, it is no surprise when things go awry. Coming together--and almost falling apart--give each of them a chance to recapture or let go of dreams and move on. There is Chuck, comic relief and surgeon-to-be; Alison, bright young lawyer trapped in unrequited love; Lindsey, former teacher, now queen of the temps; and Ben, the narrator, a would-be-writer without a story. Funny, sweet, and sometimes bitter, this first novel should be a popular read among twentysomethings about to turn 30. Recommended for public libraries.--Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A lightweight first novel explores the sea change that turning 30 brings in the lives of a group of Manhattan friends who've known one another since college. Narrator Ben, a would-be writer, works at Esquire writing lists instead of articles. Recently divorced from a wife he married on the rebound, he still loves his old girlfriend, Lindsey, a former teacher now doing temp work while she finds herself. Chuck, a resident at Mount Sinai, was a fat teenager but is now a womanizer. Allison is a lawyer in a high-powered firm, though her life really revolves around Jack, the one who left New York to become a movie star and happens to have a cocaine addiction. The story centers around the group's plan to cure Jack by whisking him away to Allison's family's vacation place upstate. Naturally, the plan goes awry, since these people seem remarkably naive about drugs and the law. And for all the concern they show in spiriting Jack away, once he really has disappeared and could be at life-threatening risk, they're all too wrapped up in their own soul-searching or romance rekindling to show much real distress. While Tropper clearly has a grasp on the pop culture he describes, he has a habit of comparing his characters' situations to other fictions, from Star Wars to Three's Company to the novels of Jay McInerney, which only emphasizes the pop-hodgepodge nature of his own writing. The characters, for all their angst and clever dialogue, are essentially flat, and the predictable denouement is no help. Reads like a fictionalization of TV's Friends, but more earnest.