Fleishman Is in Trouble
Books | Fiction / Family Life / General
3.8
(292)
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST • “A masterpiece” (NPR) about marriage, divorce, and the bewildering dynamics of ambitionNow an Emmy Award–nominated FX limited series on Hulu, starring Claire Danes, Jesse Eisenberg, Lizzy Caplan, and Adam BrodyONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Entertainment Weekly, The New York Public LibraryONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, The Washington Post, USA Today Vanity Fair, Vogue, NPR, Chicago Tribune, GQ, Vox, Refinery29, Elle, The Guardian, Real Simple, Financial Times, Parade, Good Housekeeping, New Statesman, Marie Claire, Town & Country, Evening Standard, Thrillist, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage, BookRiot, Shelf AwarenessToby 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.Alma’s Best Jewish Novel of the Year • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for Best First Book
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More Details:
Author
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Pages
400
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Published Date
2019-06-18
ISBN
0525510885 9780525510888
Community ReviewsSee all
"Bought the book last year, finally read it this year. Interesting commentary on marriage and divorce"
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Chloe
"Listened to the whole audiobook in one day. Very entertaining "
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Katie Askenasy
"Ugh this is a hard one to review. I loved Toby and enjoyed almost all parts of the book that focused on him and his kids. I hated the point of view choice though and did not feel at all connected to the narrator, Libby (I actually just had to think a minute to even remember her name, and I literally just finished the book). Obviously she wouldn't know every inner thought Toby had and so it just didn't work for me that she told the whole story - I would have preferred alternating perspectives. <br/><br/>The final 1/4 of the book was tough to get through (those looooong paragraphs!!) and I almost stopped reading. To go back to essentially the beginning of the story to hear Rachel's side, but not with nearly as much nuance or detail was really frustrating, and then to have to read page after page of Libby's inner thoughts when I just wanted to know what happened with Toby and Rachel - ugh.<br/><br/>Given all of that ... I still think the author had some important things to say about marriage and life and what's really important. Had the same story been paced or told a bit differently I may have loved this book."
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Gretchen Nord