Book Review: "Fleishman Is in Trouble" by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
”Fleishman Is in Trouble” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Publisher Synopsis:
A finely observed, timely exploration of marriage, divorce, and the bewildering dynamics of ambition from one of the most exciting writers working today
Toby Fleishman thought he knew what to expect when he and his wife of almost fifteen years separated: weekends and every other holiday with the kids, some residual bitterness, the occasional moment of tension in their co-parenting negotiations. He could not have predicted that one day, in the middle of his summer of sexual emancipation, Rachel would just drop their two children off at his place and simply not return. He had been working so hard to find equilibrium in his single life. The winds of his optimism, long dormant, had finally begun to pick up. Now this.
As Toby tries to figure out where Rachel went, all while juggling his patients at the hospital, his never-ending parental duties, and his new app-assisted sexual popularity, his tidy narrative of the spurned husband with the too-ambitious wife is his sole consolation. But if Toby ever wants to truly understand what happened to Rachel and what happened to his marriage, he is going to have to consider that he might not have seen things all that clearly in the first place.
A searing, utterly unvarnished debut, Fleishman Is in Trouble is an insightful, unsettling, often hilarious exploration of a culture trying to navigate the fault lines of an institution that has proven to be worthy of our great wariness and our great hope. —Penguin Random House
Rating (out of 5): 5
Review: Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a familiar voice to those who read celebrity features (me). Her ability to humanize her subjects without letting them off the hook (often hanging them on their own hooks), is formidable. She’s always been conversational and even delightful while being pointed and critical, a near-impossible line to walk, and her first novel is successful in making you want to give each character a firm smack upside the head and then a hug.
Brodesser-Akner is compared to Updike and Roth in cover blurbs, but she’s something potentially far better: if Updike and Roth truly viewed women as sentient creatures and not aliens. Please, just read this bit of nonsense from “The Witches of Eastwick” for a little bit of what I mean. (Also, sorry Dad, I love John Updike but let’s please just indulge me in acknowledging his failings.)
When we meet Toby Fleishman, a middle-aged hepatologist with tween children undergoing a divorce, we get a picture of a mensch just doing his best, blindsided by his soon-to-be-ex-wife Rachel’s cruelty. As someone married before the advent of dating apps, he has a boy-like bewildered joy about sex being available to him at his fingertips, and is undergoing a sexual rumspringa. And then Rachel falls off the grid.
The book is slyly narrated by his childhood friend Libby, a suburban magazine feature-writer (hmm!) who is responsible for the novel’s two notable twists: one gradual, and one quite abrupt. I’d compare the second to a Gone Girl-style twist, but that’s too simplistic for what it manages to accomplish.
“Fleishman” relies on an eye-roll worthy, but nevertheless real conceit of New York life. Fleishman is rich by the almost anyone’s standards, and poor by the standards of Rachel, an agent, and the parents of his children’s classmates. His reliance on Rachel’s income and the power dynamics that result demonstrate an incisive view of gender and money politics in modern marriages.
Brodesser-Akner’s prose is unadorned and even has a machine-gun quality at times. I laughed and then cried a little on the train at this passage:
“His mother told him that one day they’d eat their words, when he was a rich and successful doctor, and that God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle. Toby wasn’t comforted. He never would be comforted by the adage ‘God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle’ after that. Because what is the metric of handling something? Not killing yourself?”
The novel manages to take a micro-level view at a deeply flawed relationship without leaving the reader completely disheartened. It’s an accomplishment of both depth and warmth.
Trigger Warnings: Obstetric violence, urban ennui (listen, it’s real, ok)
TL; DR: I imagine this will have broad appeal, especially given recent rave reviews. Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a master. This is a quick and intense read about the dissolution of a modern marriage, about rage and pain and the distribution of labor in marriage, both emotional and physical. It’s a miserable topic, but to the author’s credit it is endlessly fascinating and unputdownable.
If you enjoyed this, you might consider this, too:
“The Dive from Clausen’s Pier” by Ann Packer
“The Uncoupling” by Meg Wolitzer
