Imagine that Wes Anderson and Jerry Seinfeld had a novel-writing baby with Judd Apatow (fertility science has made a lot of progress) and you're halfway to Jonathan Tropper's 2000 debut novel, Plan B.

Now imagine that they went on to have a whole family of genetically engineered wunderkinds, and you'd be pretty close to Tropper's fifth novel, 2009's This Is Where I Leave You.

The plot follows Judd Foxman, a man in his mid-thirties with a lot on his plate. Let's go ahead and run down the list: his wife cheated on him with his boss (ouch), he lost his job (oof), and his dad just died (gah). On top of that, he has to spend a week at his childhood home with his family to sit shiva, which essentially the Jewish version of a wake or funeral visitation, only a lot longer. Trust us, if you knew the Foxmans, you'd be cringing.

The result is an often-hilarious look at family, love, and the trials of adulthood. We see how modern men, like Judd and his brother Phillip, get trapped in extended adolescence. We see how inter-family tension can grow like a cancer if repressed or ignored. We even see the insecurity and self-doubt left in the wake of a broken marriage.

Sound heavy? Think again. Tropper would much rather make you laugh than sob into your non-alcoholic drink. It's definitely the funniest novel we've read since Wes Seinfeld Apatow Jr.'s underrated masterpiece, A Book about Nothing. Now that's a novel.

Do you get along with your family? C'mon, be honest.

The truth is that every family has its issues. Even if you spend most of your time acting like Leave It to Beaver, you're going to end up turning into The Munsters somewhere along the line.

Jonathan Tropper knows this well. Just look at the unspoken competition between Judd and Paul, the two oldest Foxman brothers. Or how Phillip, the baby of the family, constantly screws up but is only loved more for it. Or at Hillary Foxman and her truly mom-like ability to embarrass her children no matter the situation. (Sorrynotsorry, mom.)

Okay, fine. So maybe you can't relate to this. Maybe you happen to be the one person who has a perfect family, who never fights with siblings, who never feels distant from parents. Say hello to Santa and the Easter Bunny for us on the way out, would you?

For the rest of us, the novel is a painfully hilarious look at the truths of modern family life. (Sort of like Modern Family, come to think of it.) It's rare to come across a book that so accurately breaks down the way that our families act—it's even rarer to find one that'll make you laugh so hard so hard that you cry.

Read it, and then buy everyone in your family a copy for Christmakwanzaa. You can thank us later.