One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper

I really love this author--the tone of his novels is exactly the stride that I would yearn to hit, with a more feminine voice, if I were to write novels myself.  This installation into a largely irreverent oeuvre is not quite as wonderful as his last (This Is Where I Leave You)--but I very much enjoyed it.

Here's the story.  Silver is a one-hit wonder.  He wrote one hit song, played with a band that had a moment of fame, and he never really got over it.  A victim of his limited success.  He didn't develop another persona--he went from rock star to faded rock star without raising a finger to reinvent himself.  He let his wife leave him and he paid no attention to his daughter--now his ex is getting remarried and his daughter is a grown up, and he realizes that he has nothing worth living for.  He has two friends who are as lame as he is, and not much else.

I know, so far it doesn't sound that funny.  While he is accompanying his daughter to get an abortion after she got pregnant the first time she had sex (which he really doesn't cut her much slack about, and she doesn't think any less of him for it because when you are at the bottom of respect, you can't go down), he has a transient ischemic attack, a mini-stroke.  Once again, his timing sucks.   He steals the thunder and leaves her unattended to once again.

But it gets worse.  It turns out he has a dissecting aortic aneurism--which is fatal if left untreated, but can be fixed with surgery.  Which his ex-wife's future husband offers to fix for him.  Silver decides, much to everyone's dismay, that he doesn't want to fix it.  He doesn't want to kill himself but he doesn't have anything to live for.  So the rest of the book is his journey to find that something.  In the meantime, his father, who is a rabbi, insists that he see every Jewish life cycle event while on his search for meaning in the world.  I know, it still doesn't sound that funny, but it is, and it does speak to me.  Please God, let me avoid this man.