User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This is indeed a very readable novel with really interesting characters. There are a lot of people in their early forties having mid-life crises in this novel. And I was really interested in those crises as they are very interesting. The prose is so dense, almost too dense at times. This is one of those novels where there is so much story to tell and I wanted to know all of that story but I question the structure. There is a narrative device of a third party narrator that honestly drove me to distraction. I kept thinking, "why is she telling us this story?" I just wanted Toby and Rachel to tell their story.
That said, this book is going to do very well and it should because it is wickedly smart and angry and it absolutely skewers a certain social set while also saying necessary things about success and gender and marriage and the ways women are punished for being ambitious and complicated and human.
The ending is wonderful. As in the last line. I liked that a lot. Great summer book. I hope people read it.
Rating: really liked it
Damn, I wanted to like this novel. Brodesser-Akner is one of our greatest magazine feature writers, and the reviews—by people I trust—have been near-unanimous raves. But I kind of hated it.
There are many, many sharp observations here about men & women & marriage & divorce. The prose is extremely quotable though nowhere near as funny as some readers have suggested (the raunchy dating-app material is mostly just sad). But the problem for me isn’t that literally every adult character except for the largely invisible narrator is unsympathetic—it’s the lack of universality in both the story and the relationship insights. Brodesser-Akner’s characters all come from a narrow slice of wealthy, social-climbing NY/NJ life; these men/women/marriage/divorce problems are very much Upper West Side men/women/marriage/divorce problems. And everyone here seems . . .
stuck. Characters find themselves in time & money crunches, feeling neglected, resentful of spouses & friends & co-workers, but those crunches are the product of choices—choices that are neither inevitable nor permanent. It’s irritating that none of the characters seems to recognize that there are alternative ways of living, communicating, parenting.
Two-thirds of the way through the novel, I was dreading a radical eleventh-hour perspective shift à la Lauren Groff’s
Fates and Furies . . . and sure enough, it arrives and speeds through an alternate view of the story we’ve just read, intended to unsettle everything we thought, with blocks of mostly undigested essay text on relationships—again, insightful stuff, but not necessarily relevant. Toby and Rachel’s marriage is so unusual & dysfunctional & awful that viewing it from different angles yields limited returns. #notallmen #notallwomen #notallmarriages #notalldivorces
Rating: really liked it
Fleishman is in Trouble is the kind of book that makes a mockery of the 5-star rating system. Here is a novel that is equal parts highly relatable and alienating; enjoyable and aggravating (and great bookclub fodder: discuss for hours!). This book wants you to sympathize with millionaire New Yorkers, people whose lifestyle is totally out of reach for most, and to see them as people with feelings and real struggles … but not with the even-wealthier New Yorkers who it casts as villains and over-privileged jerks. It tries so hard to subvert narratives that it ends up doubling back on itself.
“That was what I knew for sure, that this was the only way to get someone to listen to a woman—to tell her story through a man; Trojan horse yourself into a man, and people would give a shit about you.”So this novel is a Trojan horse, ostensibly about the recently separated Toby Fleishman and his adventures in dating, but really about his ball-busting wife Rachel (in absentia) and his old friend Libby, who functions as both a (preternaturally omniscient) Nick Carraway-type narrator and as an author stand-in.
Cleverly, Toby is cast in the traditionally feminine role of being the secondary earner in his marriage (despite his six-figure hepatologist’s salary, which pales in comparison to Rachel’s career as a celebrity agent). Meanwhile Rachel’s narrative tackles that old chestnut: ‘women are expected to parent like they don’t have a job, and work like they don’t have kids’. Slightly undermining all this is the enormous resources the pair have to hire nannies, assistants and the like. Much of their financial, and indeed emotional, strain is self-inflicted from a desire to climb the ladder and keep up appearances. Still, Brodesser-Akner does a good job of making us care.
The story is incredibly layered, with almost every plot point taking on a permutation of gender inequality: the one-woman “off-off-off-off-off-Broadway” show that gives Rachel her big break as an agent; Toby’s dating-app sexting escapades; his female patient’s previously overlooked medical condition; an incident involving Rachel & Toby’s tween daughter at sleepaway camp; and more. The layers—each one potent and endlessly discussable in its own right—are so crammed in together there’s no space for anything to breathe, and the novel densifies under their weight.
It’s also kind of repetitious, making the same contentions in slightly different flavours over and over. Libby has a long diatribe towards the end which, while very much on point, seems like a Brodesser-Akner essay on gender roles shoehorned in there just to bludgeon the reader one last time.
The Trojan horse manoeuvre is inspired but it fails in execution because 80% of the novel is spent describing the horse, ie Toby’s story. The horse is not the point. I was rather bored by the horse and wanted much, much more of Rachel.
Maybe, inadvertently, the Trojan horse here is not a man’s story, but rich people’s stories. Imagine a novel skewering gender roles, marriage, and midlife, but it’s about a divorced parent on the poverty line, relying on welfare (and child support payments that never, ever arrive), working around the clock to provide for their children. When that character experiences a breakdown, disappears for weeks, cutting off all contact with their own kids… would readers sympathise with them? Would such a novel even get published? Could it ever be a smash hit like
Fleishman is in Trouble?
If the measure of a book is how much you want to talk about it when you’re done, this would be an easy 5 stars. If it’s how much you enjoy the ride, maybe 2? Split the difference then,
Fleishman is in Trouble gets 3.5 stars from me.
Rating: really liked it
Believe the hype. “Fleishman Is in Trouble” is even better than we were promised. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, a New York Times Magazine writer, brings to her first novel the currency of a hot dating app and the wisdom of a Greek tragedy. The result is a feminist jeremiad nested inside a brilliant comic novel — a book that makes you laugh so hard you don’t notice till later that your eyebrows have been singed off.
As the story opens, life sounds like an erotic carnival for Toby Fleishman. A New York doctor newly separated from his wife, Toby has arrived at the age of 41 to discover a city suddenly flush with women who want him. Now. “His phone was aglow from sunup to sundown,” the narrator writes, with texts that contained “underboob and sideboob and just straight up boob and all the parts of a woman he never dared dream he would encounter.” After enduring a chronically nerdy adolescence and a tense 14-year marriage, Toby is dazzled by this sexual bounty. “Could it be,” he wonders, “that he wasn’t as. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
Rating: really liked it
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
What makes a book literary fiction? Dense writing? Bogged down in unnecessary details? Filled with unlikeable people? Repetitive? Too many pages for the subject matter being tackled? Pretention? An author who has a day job at the New Yorker? Beat-you-over-the-head-super-preachy-but-trying-to-be-cleverly-hidden social commentary? A narrator who feels like an afterthought the majority of the time and who jumps the train off the track by choosing to begin telling
her story at some point rather than the one she is supposed to be telling? If so, this checks all the boxes. It also had me like . . . . .
No point in attempting a review. I’m quite sure I was too stupid to “get” this book so I’ll save the trolls some typing. I didn’t like the characters– I didn’t like the writing – I didn’t like the message . . . . or rather the way the message was delivered. I didn’t like one thing about it and that’s my opinion. End of story.
Rating: really liked it
This witty, crude, comic/tragic contemporary story ‘mostly’ worked for me.
A little shorter would have worked better -a little less repetitiveness even better...
BUT...
I LIKED IT!!! I REALLY LIKED IT!!
Truth was seeping through the seams.... while exploring marriage, divorce, friendships, dating, sexing, colleagues, children, siblings, money, narcissism, assholes, annoyances, anger, selfishness, entitlement, play dates, yoga clothes, beef lo mein, women of a certain age, ramblings, points of view from several characters, communication challenges, all in the context of being a touchy & controversial novel.
I imagine readers thoughts are all over the place from disappointment to greatness and everything in between.
Personally - I found this book to be better than my expectations. I saw very low reviews come out the door fast. So - I wasn’t expecting much.
For me... it provokes
self-reflection,
self-depreciation,
and
self/defection.
Some of the best parts are near the end - twisting my ‘thinking’ and purpose for the first half of the book.
Life is short...
Life is validating & affirming
Life lacks forgiveness
Life is annoying- infuriating
Life is disorienting
Life is flawed
Life is love
Modern life is complex with complicated dynamics...
Taffy Brodesser-Akner gives us a satire of the bare interior of marriage & divorce and all the orgasms of life that come with it.
It’s crazy - it’s light & dark -
it’s funny - it’s sad.
Not to everyone’s taste..
but it fit mine.
I enjoyed this fiction catastrophe!
Flawed - flawed - and flawed....
“Fleishman is in Trouble” gives us *Toby Fleishman* ... middle age -
a short 5’5” tall Jewish guy.
I’ve heard short-Jewish-guy jokes much all my life. I have a couple of very smart, upper-middle class short Jewish guy friends. They do make me laugh...
so at times I found Toby Fleishman fairly relatable.....
Other times - just obnoxiously annoying.
Set in Manhattan- the Hamptons, and Israel.
“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 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”.
Toby tries to figure out where Rachel went, while balancing work at the hospital, his kids, and his new sexual popularity.
He also needs to seriously examine what went wrong in his marriage.
The dialogue is often crass with it’s non-stop sexual exploits. Yet it’s shrewdness and insightful wittiness was thought-provoking.
I didn’t find this novel ‘ha-ha’ hilarious- but I did
laugh. I rolled my eyes on occasion..but I was very surprised when -from time to time - gut-truthful sentences bounced off the page.
“He couldn’t see his own reflection in the mirror anymore”.
As an aging - past middle age woman...I’m not so sure I can see my reflection in the mirror anymore either.
Instead... I reflect inward.
4.5 .... for the entertaining inventive - psychologically intriguing - worthy insightful look at petty cruelties -
a look at ‘me’ - colliding with social changes.
Rating: really liked it
Man there's a lot of sex in this book. It feels like it's on every page. I wasn't offended by it, it just bored me. If Toby Fleishman is not scrolling through revealing pics over horny older women on a dating app, he's thinking about the last time he banged his horrible ex-wife, or when he might bang her next. His friends are no different - Libby is supposed to be the sensible voice of reason but she's still thinking about the affair she had with her first editor. And Seth is a total ladies man, just for some variation. I was almost relieved when we got to a scene with Toby's kids. Surely they'll have something else going in their lives, I thought to myself. Nope! Eight-year-old Solly gets busted for looking up
"girl bagina" on the family computer.
Do people really think about sex this much? All day, every day? Sure it crosses my mind every now and then but I'm mostly thinking about whether my football team will win the next game or the amazing sandwich I had for lunch. And that's not the only repetitive aspect of the narrative - if I had to read one more reference to Toby's height...
I suppose the book has some interesting things to say about marriage and the fact that there are two sides to every story. But I couldn't really bring myself to care about any of the self-absorbed characters and their first world problems. I suppose I just expected more from one of the most hyped novels of the year.
Rating: really liked it
I’m not saying stories about the marital and financial angst of people who make well over six figures and choose (voluntarily!) to live in New York are by nature dull and exhausting, but wow, this one was. In this novel, it seems every unhappy family is, in fact, unhappy in the exact same way, and nothing about Taffy Akner’s storytelling (which is far more suited to the exposition-friendly profiles that made her famous) offers enough insight to make it worth suffering through these characters’ misery and self-pity. And did we need to spend 80% of this novel with a transparently awful man to get to the book’s *actual* point that – surprise! what a twist –everything is worse for women? This review is probably too harsh and salty, so I apologize for being so dismissive – probably a sign that I should’ve just DNF’ed this one way back at the 20 page mark.
Rating: really liked it
Fleishman is in Trouble is a incisive, sharply observed and humorous novel that examines the nature and anatomy of a American marriage, family, divorce and identity at the privileged end of the social and economic spectrum, set in New York. The Jewish middle aged hepatologist, Toby Fleishman, and his wife, Rachel, are getting divorced, retaining joint custody of their children, 11 year old Hannah and 7 year old Solly. Whilst this is an entertaining read, there are aspects that grate and irritate, it is overly repeating and in some of the portrayed sex life of Toby. A surprised Toby now discovers he is a much desired man, wanted by many women, which is in sharp contrast to his younger days when disappointment and rejection were more his lot. Nowadays, the modern world of online dating and apps have him plunging in enthusiastically, keen to expand his sexual experiences.
His ambitious wife, Rachel, was the primary bread winner in their marriage, with her successful talent agency, and her efforts to push him to be equally go getting were rebuffed by him. Toby's world shifts considerably when Rachel unexpectedly disappears, leaving him with the children to look after, he becomes increasingly frustrated as he is unable to locate the elusive Rachel. Left with all the responsibilities of parenting in the modern age of mobile phones and problematic social media, Toby's professional career begins to suffer. Toby is to find that his thoughts and beliefs regarding his marriage are not necessarily so. In a narrative related by Toby's old friend, Libby, a former magazine features writer, herself married with a daughter, the author is partially successful in her use of the literary 'trojan horse' device to lay bare the unacknowledged realities that women face in society through role reversal, the issue is that there is an insufficient focus on the women.
We become privy to Rachel's perspective on her marriage and Libby's inner thoughts and feelings in the exploration and analysis of gender differences amidst the differing social and cultural attitudes and expectations when it comes to women in comparison to men. This is a satirical, multilayered read on the complexities of life, the challenges of marriage, the inequalities, parenting, the differing experiences of ageing faced by men and women, middle aged angst, identity, and the self inflicted further pressures placed within marriages, parenting and family. I found this a particularly thought provoking reading when it comes to looking at and evaluating the concept of marriage in our complicated modern contemporary realities. Many thanks to Headline for an ARC.
Rating: really liked it
So much to think about here. This is a book of many layers, a book that keeps on giving. Brodesser-Akner has so many astute observations about marriage and being a woman--particularly interesting is her thesis that a story must be told through the perspective of a man to be taken seriously.
Then she uses her skills as a writer to do just that, beginning her tale through Toby (a man's eyes), who is going through a divorce and using a constellation of characters around Toby to fill in the details. It's
very clever. The way she reverses roles, and without giving away the ending, makes her point very clear.
I initially struggled with the novel because I found many of her characters unlikeable. They are smart, witty and sometimes wise, but then they would treat other people poorly, such as their devoted nanny. The main characters are scornful and derisive, they pass judgment on everyone: their life partners, the preppy kid, the sad "non-working" mother. For example, Rachel says, "The only thing more offensive than Miriam not working was Miriam thinking she did work. But Miriam would never know true success. She would never know achievement. She would never know what it was like to build something and hold it in your hands." There is so much judgement in that sentence!
We are all fallible, we all make mistakes. The strange dichotomy is that these characters seem so frustrated with their own mortality, and yet are so judgemental of everyone else's sloppy, imperfect lives. I found them in many ways to be petty, with a hyper-focus on money, status and external success. After I finished the book, I went to bed, a bit disturbed. I woke up thinking these characters perhaps lacked an internal life. It was quite a contrast after just finishing four Austen books, where inner life is held up so highly in her careful hands.
But ultimately, I had a lot of sympathy for the mother in this book. She is a highly intelligent woman who on the surface appears to have it all. A very wise octogenarian once told me, "You can have it all, but not at the same time." I've often reflected on this comment. The mother in this book is trying to do just that: for her it's having a big job and being the boss, lots of yoga, being involved with her children lives and activities, and vast social commitments. Personally, I've found it impossible to do many things well at the same time. Something is always breaking down. Another wise octogenarian I know (I love to talk to people in their 80s), once told me, "It's no problem to have a big job and an involved relationship with your children, but then you
must have no social life." I have also pondered that comment over the years.
Anyways, at this moment, during a pandemic, we are all suffering from a new normal. I've seen many women posting in social media about how this current pandemic is difficult for them. All the things they used to outsource are now on their shoulders while they still have to continue their old jobs (and did we mention homeschooling?). When you try to do everything at once, how can you do it all well? Time is finite. Women
and men are forced to make difficult choices.
I'm glad that Brodesser-Akner has contributed so thoughtfully to this debate. This book is a great one for starting up important conversations.
Rating: really liked it
A sharp and sardonic novel in which the only nice person is the 9 year old son.
Rating: really liked it
I won a kindle e-book edition of this novel in a Goodreads Giveaway. Unfortunately, it was not the book for me.
The main character, Toby Fleishman, is 41 years old, a doctor, short, going through a divorce, and learning about internet dating sites. It covers marriage, children, divorce, internet dating, the affects of divorce on children and much more. Unfortunately, the pacing was slow and I did not care for the characters.
This novel was not poignant, memorable, or even thought-provoking to me. I actually dreaded picking up my kindle every time I started to read more of this book. Maybe, I was in the mood to read a different type of book. It may appeal to others, but it was not for me.
Rating: really liked it
That was what I knew for sure, that this was the only way to get someone to listen to a woman—to tell her story through a man; Trojan horse yourself into a man, and people would give a shit about you.
On the surface,
Fleishman Is in Trouble is the story of Toby Fleishman, a 41-year-old doctor who’s going through a divorce. He’s learning to navigate his new lifestyle—especially dating apps—and trying to balance his job and his suddenly active sex life with his parenting responsibilities to two tween kids. But when Rachel, his soon-to-be ex-wife, disappears from his life it sends him and their kids into a downward spiral.
But look underneath the surface and you’ll slowly notice that the story here is not being told by Toby, or by some omniscient narrator. The story is being told by Libby Epstein, a friend of Toby’s from college, with whom he reconnected during his divorce. And she’s not just telling Toby’s story. She is telling Rachel’s story. She is telling her own story. And ultimately she is speaking to the universal “overwhelming unfairness of what happens to a woman’s status and body and position in the culture once she’s a mother.”
Sounds heavy, right? A Upper Manhattan version of Fates and Furies? Not really. There are some similarities in structure and the deeper themes of what makes a marriage. But overall, the tone of
Fleishman Is in Trouble is comic, and downright hilarious in places, with sharp writing throughout (e.g., “He had a slightly lazy eye, which would stray only when he’d been staring at you for a long time, as if the eye were done with the conversation and was hinting at the rest of him that it was time to go.”)
Fleishman Is in Trouble is a brilliant—and apparently underrated, at least on Goodreads—debut novel. A must read.
Rating: really liked it
Dr. Toby Fleishman is separated from his wife, Rachel, a workaholic talent agent. They have 2 kids, an 11-year old, Hannah, and a 9-year old, Solly. In the midst of their divorce, Toby moves into a mediocre apartment while Rachel stays in their high-end one. In between working at the hospital, where he’s up for a promotion, and remaining a steady father to his kids, Toby ventures into the world of online dating. He’s shocked and intrigued by the forwardness of many women now, as he’s been out of the dating game for years. One morning he wakes up to find his kids at his place — Rachel dropped them off while Toby was sleeping. After an impromptu day of taking care of them, Rachel doesn’t return. After a few odd days where she remains M.I.A., Toby realizes: he’s in trouble.
Relationships are complicated and 41-year old Toby is forced to take a hard look at his, with his ex-wife, his children, friends, and others. While I can relate to the ambitious career-driven woman, Rachel was incredibly unlikable and my feelings about her character didn’t change much. I had no idea where
Fleishman is in Trouble was headed or how things would turn out, but for the most part, enjoyed the journey. I also liked the way the book was written - Smart and impactful.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
I adore this novel! There is so much cleverness here - an aching, intelligent cleverness that doesn't cross the line to snarky. While reading, I nodded so much (Yes, that's it! Exactly!) that my neck still aches. Brodesser-Akner writes beautifully and with penetrating insight about marriage and relationships. For a while, I thought I "got" Toby and Rachel, but these characters are so alive they can't be easily pinned down. For me, this was a totally immersive page turner that spun me around and around.
