This Is Where I Leave You Characters

We like to think of This Is Where I Leave You as Judd Foxman's coming-of-age tale. Judd joins the ranks of iconic characters like Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye and Benjamin Brad...

Phillip is the youngest and the wild child of the Foxman family. He loves partying, going crazy, and meeting good-looking ladies. As Judd says, he's also the only one in the family who ever "come[s...

We know you think that your mom is embarrassing, but just thank your lucky stars she's not Hillary Foxman, going around in low-cut tops asking you to accept that your mother is a "sexual being" and...

Oh, Jen. You lying, cheating … Well, hang on. How much do we really know about Jen as a character? After all, all we get is Judd's perspective on her, and he spends most of the book dissecting hi...

Like her brother Judd, Wendy is going through a minor midlife crisis. (Seriously, you'd think that these kids would be better prepared for life, given the fact that they had a psychologist for a mo...

Horry's life changed dramatically in one moment: the bar fight that left him epileptic. Like Paul's Rottweiler attack, Horry's bar fight is a seemingly small event with life-altering effects.After...

In hindsight, the revelation that Linda and Hillary are romantically involved shouldn't be too surprising. Linda has been a surrogate mother for the Foxmans for years, and this only makes that info...

Out of all the Foxman children, Paul shares the most in common with their late father, Mort. He's stoic, macho, and—to be honest—not always pleasant to be around. Of course, he also shares his...

Okay, so things with Alice get pretty weird—we're not going to deny that. That being said, we don't think you should judge her too harshly for her actions. Like many other characters in the novel...

Oh, Penny. Where have you been all our lives? Off chasing moonbeams and polka dots with your other Manic Pixie Dream Girl sidekicks?Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a term coined by critic Nathan Rabin to...

Barry is Wall Street embodied. He lives his life by a simple code: business always comes first.Barry is so focused on his work that we never really get a sense of his personality. He rarely talks t...

We don't get to know Tracy very well in This Is Where I Leave You. For the most part, she's only there to illustrate how Phillip is trying and failing to become a functioning adult. There's really...

Wade Boulanger is the ultimate alpha male. He's "tall and beefy," with "genetically superior shoulders" (14.5); he's sexually proficient, and unflappably confident (3.22). In many ways, he's the co...