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Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel Hardcover – June 18, 2019
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Now an Emmy Award–nominated FX limited series on Hulu, starring Claire Danes, Jesse Eisenberg, Lizzy Caplan, and Adam Brody
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Entertainment Weekly, The New York Public Library
ONE 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 Awareness
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.
Alma’s Best Jewish Novel of the Year • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for Best First Book
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House
- Publication dateJune 18, 2019
- Dimensions6.33 x 1.33 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100525510877
- ISBN-13978-0525510871
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
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From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Review
“When his ex drops the kids off and doesn’t come back, a father of two revisits the choices that led to this moment. He searches for answers, hilariously and heartbreakingly avoiding the darkest questions. Brodesser-Akner’s debut is a referendum on marriage, friendship, and how we live (and love) right now.”—People
“Whip-smart, gleefully scatological . . . [Brodesser-Akner] aims a perfect gimlet eye at the city’s relentless self-regard. . . . But her best trick may be the novel’s narrator: An elusive presence identified at first only as an old friend of Toby’s from their study-abroad days, she turns out to be both the book’s Trojan horse and—in a brilliant third-act pivot—its greatest gift, transforming a fizzy comedy of manners into something genuinely, unexpectedly profound.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Many novelists have written excellent fictional indictments of interpersonal and systemic sexism. Not since Teju Cole’s Open City—a very different book in all other respects—has a novelist put the reader on the wrong side the way Brodesser-Akner does. To do so, she uses a lot of intelligence, a lot of anger, a great sense of humor and a whole new variation on the magic we know from her magazine work. The result is a maddening, unsettling masterpiece, and, yes, you will be moved and inexplicably grateful at the end.”—NPR
“In her witty and well-observed debut, Taffy Brodesser-Akner updates the miserable-matrimony novel, dropping it squarely in our times. . . . Brodesser-Akner has written a potent, upsetting and satisfying novel, illustrating how the marital pledge—build our life together—overlooks a key fact: There are two lives.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Electric . . . Brodesser-Akner’s first foray into fiction—set in Manhattan, the Hamptons, and Israel—is funny, stylish, and insightful, whether describing men’s challenged communication skills or the knife juggler’s agility required to maintain a modern marriage.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s sharp debut novel is packed with humor and heart. In it, the titular trouble begins when Toby Fleishman realizes that Rachel—his wife of 15 years, from whom he’s now separated—is missing. Where has she gone, and why? This book will have you racing through the pages to find the answers.”—Southern Living
“Everything you could wish for in a satisfying summer read . . . Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s page-turner doubles as a satirical take on modern relationships.”—Women’s Health
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Yes, who could have predicted that Toby Fleishman, at the age of forty-one, would find that his phone was aglow from sunup to sundown (in the night the glow was extra bright) with texts that contained G-string and ass cleavage and underboob and sideboob and just straight-up boob and all the parts of a woman he never dared dream he would encounter in a person who was three- dimensional—meaning literally three-dimensional, as in a person who wasn’t on a page or a computer screen. All this, after a youth full of romantic rejection! All this, after putting a lifetime bet on one woman! Who could have predicted this? Who could have predicted that there was such life in him yet?
Still, he told me, it was jarring. Rachel was gone now, and her goneness was so incongruous to what had been his plan. It wasn’t that he still wanted her—he absolutely did not want her. He absolutely did not wish she were still with him. It was that he had spent so long waiting out the fumes of the marriage and busying himself with the paperwork necessary to extricate himself from it—telling the kids, moving out, telling his colleagues—that he had not considered what life might be like on the other side of it. He understood divorce in a macro way, of course. But he had not yet adjusted to it in a micro way, in the other-side-of-the-bed-being-empty way, in the nobody-to-tell-you-were-running-late way, in the you-belong-to-no-one way. How long was it before he could look at the pictures of women on his phone—pictures the women had sent him eagerly and of their own volition—straight on, instead of out of the corner of his eye? Okay, sooner than he thought but not immediately. Certainly not immediately.
He hadn’t looked at another woman once during his marriage, so in love with Rachel was he—so in love was he with any kind of institution or system. He made solemn, dutiful work of trying to save the relationship even after it would have been clear to any reasonable person that their misery was not a phase. There was nobility in the work, he believed. There was nobility in the suffering. And even after he realized that it was over, he still had to spend years, plural, trying to convince her that this wasn’t right, that they were too unhappy, that they were still young and could have good lives without each other—even then he didn’t let one millimeter of his eye wander. Mostly, he said, because he was too busy being sad. Mostly because he felt like garbage all the time, and a person shouldn’t feel like garbage all the time. More than that, a person shouldn’t be made horny when he felt like garbage. The intersection of horniness and low self-esteem seemed reserved squarely for porn consumption.
But now there was no one to be faithful to. Rachel wasn’t there.
She was not in his bed. She was not in the bathroom, applying liquid eyeliner to the area where her eyelid met her eyelashes with the precision of an arthroscopy robot. She was not at the gym, or coming back from the gym in a less black mood than usual, not by much but a little. She was not up in the middle of the night, complaining about the infinite abyss of her endless insomnia. She was not at Curriculum Night at the kids’ extremely private and yet somehow progressive school on the West Side, sitting in a small chair and listening to the new and greater demands that were being placed on their poor children compared to the prior year. (Though, then again she rarely was. Those nights, like the other nights, she was at work, or at dinner with a client, what she called “pulling her weight” when she was being kind, and what she called “being your cash cow” when she wasn’t.) So no, she was not there. She was in a completely other home, the one that used to be his, too. Every single morning this thought overwhelmed him momentarily; it panicked him, so that the rst thing he thought when he awoke was this: Something is wrong. There is trouble. I am in trouble. It had been he who asked for the divorce, and still: Something is wrong. There is trouble. I am in trouble. Each morning, he shook this off. He reminded himself that this was what was healthy and appropriate and the natural order. She wasn’t supposed to be next to him anymore. She was supposed to be in her separate, nicer home.
But she wasn’t there, either, not on this particular morning. He learned this when he leaned over to his new IKEA nightstand and picked up his phone, whose beating presence he felt even in those few minutes before his eyes officially opened. He had maybe seven or eight texts there, most of them from women who had reached out during the night via his dating app, but his eyes went straight to Rachel’s text, somewhere in the middle. It seemed to give off a different light than the ones that contained body parts and lacy bands of panty; it somehow drew his eyes in a way the others didn’t. At five a.m. she’d written, I’m headed to Kripalu for the weekend; the kids are at your place FYI.
It took two readings to realize what that meant, and Toby, ignoring the erection he’d allowed to flourish knowing that his phone was rife with new masturbation material, jumped out of bed. He ran into the hallway, and he saw that their two children were in their bedrooms, asleep. FYI the kids were there? FYI? FYI was an afterthought; FYI was supplementary. It wasn’t essential. This information, that his children had been deposited into his home under the cover of darkness during an unscheduled time with the use of a key that had been supplied to Rachel in case of a true and dire emergency, seemed essential.
Product details
- Publisher : Random House; First Edition (June 18, 2019)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0525510877
- ISBN-13 : 978-0525510871
- Item Weight : 1.35 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.33 x 1.33 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #167,435 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,732 in Fiction Satire
- #3,309 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #10,702 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and the author of two novels: Fleishman Is in Trouble (2019, Random House), which she adapted into an Emmy-nominated limited series for FX in 2022; and Long Island Compromise (2024, also Random House). She lives in New York City.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book engaging and thought-provoking. They describe the narrator as funny and witty. However, some readers found the content depressing and boring, with an overly long narrative structure. Opinions vary on the plot and writing quality, with some finding it intriguing and strong, while others felt it was tedious and dreary. There are also mixed reviews regarding character development, with some finding them excellent and well-developed, while others felt they were unlikable.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They say it offers a glimpse into other people's marriages, is worth the praise it received, and is enjoyable to read on a plane or in a waiting room. The back half of the book is worth it and is worth reading.
"...Insightful observations about love, loss of innocence, disappointment (professional and personal)...." Read more
"This novel is that rare thing, an excellent read that is also a thoughtful inquiry into the nature of adulthood, particularly female adulthood in..." Read more
"...8%, the part introducing Fleishman, was riveting and worthy of the praise the book received...." Read more
"...Would Rachel also be seen as the hero/victim, or as an ungrateful, dissatisfied, and overly ambitious semi-villain who selfishly placed her material..." Read more
Customers find the book thought-provoking and engaging. They appreciate the witty writing style and insightful commentary on dating, relationships, and adulthood. The characters' perspectives are enjoyable to read, and the subplots keep them entertained. Overall, readers find the book thoughtful and provocative.
"...a rare talent for description that digs deep and then surfaces a distilled understanding that makes perfectly clear the underpinnings of the scene,..." Read more
"...Deep thoughts. Insightful observations about love, loss of innocence, disappointment (professional and personal)...." Read more
"...Smart, very funny while also deeply sad with a lot of hurt and anger and over the top impersonal sexual acrobatics...." Read more
"...that rare thing, an excellent read that is also a thoughtful inquiry into the nature of adulthood, particularly female adulthood in upper middle..." Read more
Customers enjoy the humor in the book. They find the narrator earthy and wise, while also being witty and amusing at times. The author's voice is described as funny, provocative, sad, hilarious, and well-described.
"...of one of them, who also is the book’s narrator, are at once earthily funny and aphoristically wise...." Read more
"The (e)book started as a highly humorous satire and I thought the first 8%, the part introducing Fleishman, was riveting and worthy of the praise..." Read more
"...The author is funny at moments -- I did enjoy the humorous tank tops the work-out obsessed women wear to the gym and to pick up their kids -- but she..." Read more
"...Great satire and so true. Good adventure, if you can get over some of the trite stuff." Read more
Customers find the plot gripping with many twists and turns. However, some feel the narrative structure is annoying and disjointed, with a diatribe about how women get short shrift at work.
"...The book tells a good story. But more significantly, reading it was therapeutic...." Read more
"...then on the upbeat satire of the opening pages morphed into a boring family drama and a meandering mystery with echoes from Gone Girl..." Read more
"...by the question of what happened to the missing wife.....I was intrigued by the plot, annoyed by the characters, and interested in the writing style..." Read more
"Yes, it’s too long & narrative structure gets annoying...." Read more
Customers have different views on the writing quality. Some find it engaging and witty, with an omniscient narrator who keeps them entertained. Others feel the conversations are stilted and tedious, with discursive paragraphs that lack dialogue.
"...I liked the author's writing style from an unrelated article some several months back but honestly wouldn't have put her name together with this book..." Read more
"She's a great writer. She didn't show all she had in this book because so much of it was a low brow topic (gratuitous post divorce sex)...." Read more
"...at her best when writing dialogue, but in many places, there were dialogue-free, discursive paragraphs, and my mind tended to wander while trying to..." Read more
"...Lots of highlighted passages, wonderful observations about people, relationships, class, life …. But in the end a story that lost its way." Read more
Customers have different views on the character development. Some find it excellent and relatable, with wonderful observations about people, relationships, class, and life. They appreciate the raw, true human emotion and multiple perspectives. Others feel the characters are unlikable and self-absorbed.
"...” an example of misplaced values and very poor choices....The characters are annoying because this is satire, and the humor here is rather dark, not..." Read more
"...Lots of highlighted passages, wonderful observations about people, relationships, class, life …. But in the end a story that lost its way." Read more
"...All characters are repelling and deja vue, even the kids seem soulless...." Read more
"...What I enjoyed most was the humanity of the lead character, Toby, despite his flaws, desperation, and seeming lack of agency...." Read more
Customers have different views on the pacing of the book. Some find it engaging and fast-paced, while others feel it's slow and repetitive.
"...interrogating what used to be called “the female question,” and it is angry and funny and moving on the subject...." Read more
"Other reviews complain about the slow pace. It did seem slow at times, but for the most part, the author is a witty observer, and kept me..." Read more
"...and I thought the first 8%, the part introducing Fleishman, was riveting and worthy of the praise the book received...." Read more
"...parts, where it got a little more interesting and thankfully, became a faster read...." Read more
Customers find the book depressing and dreary. They mention it's overly long, boring, and filled with unhappy people. The characters are interesting but not emotionally engaging. The ending feels anticlimactic and unsatisfying.
"...The the sadness got thicker and the humor and delightful language turned into harangue and WILDLY overstated angst of the privileged, and I skimmed..." Read more
"...whole book and when I found out the what and why of it, it felt really anticlimactic...." Read more
"...Every sexual connection seems empty and that makes it both sad and vulgar." Read more
"...The book was overly long and sometimes rather boring. The last chapter was a diatribe about how women get the short shrift at work and in marriage...." Read more
Reviews with images
Brodesser-Akner's voice hits the perfect pitch.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2019I couldn't put this book down, reading it in two sittings where I normally only get to devote 30 minutes at a time (weekends only) to engage in leisure reading. I liked the author's writing style from an unrelated article some several months back but honestly wouldn't have put her name together with this book, nor maybe even have run across the book at all, but for her appearance on a podcast I listen to daily. That one episode- not particularly focused on the book itself- made me immediately order the book, and I wasn't disappointed.
Aside from a rare talent for description that digs deep and then surfaces a distilled understanding that makes perfectly clear the underpinnings of the scene, the author equips readers with the ability to follow the characters lock-step in a way that feels personal, revealing, and uniquely participatory. Think: If Bob Ross were to have broken down the unforgiving/unforgivable ennui and tortuous stagnation rewarded to women siloed by gendered expectations of career/partnerhood/motherhood/ambition/sexuality/aggression/fulfillment in the same way he could dismantle, clarify, and reconstitute a landscape into its component parts. Even the delivery of this story, which is accomplished by following the challenges posed to the (sympathetic) male hero, embodies the concepts explored in the book that a woman's story can only be told (accepted?) through the male experience. We like Toby, we root for Toby, and his experience is no less valid or significant... But the unheard story is that of Rachel, whose half of the marital decline is summed up in only a few pages- a footnote to the story of Toby.
The point is not that the book focused on Toby and his experience, but is much deeper; would the story, if told exclusively from the position of Rachel, be palatable? As sympathic? Would Rachel also be seen as the hero/victim, or as an ungrateful, dissatisfied, and overly ambitious semi-villain who selfishly placed her material wants over family and a devoted partner? Would this book even be received by readers if it told the story of a driven woman who was forced to balance, somewhat precariously, a career and children and found her life unsatisfactory despite undeniable success, relative wealth/privilege, and a supportive husband? Or would its "acceptance" be another "the future is female" empty gesture at best, at worst a nagging, self-indulgent example of a third wave feminist trope? The author seems to suggest, through the side story of the narrator, that this focus- the lens that transforms the counternarrative of Rachel into a digestable, secondary story- is a deliberately covert way to make this point. And it's effective.
The book tells a good story. But more significantly, reading it was therapeutic. All the frenetic, painfully conflicted ways of thinking about paths and paths not taken, the tradeoffs required to aim high (but not too high), to be a partner (but too often more paternalistic than partnered in the uneven negotiation of egos and expectations), and the unwavering guilt of it all... The way these considerations are put on us and put on ourselves, the way even women judge other women- directly or indirectly, these things aren't talked about. Not really.
This book presents a kind of comfort in knowing that one's experience and ways of processing and feeling aren't unique. That your variety of madness and disquiet aren't personal. And that if, when you read Toby's story, you both sympathize and instinctively feel the presence of the anti-matter in that universe, that of Rachel's experience, you are not selfish or alone.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2019She's a great writer. She didn't show all she had in this book because so much of it was a low brow topic (gratuitous post divorce sex). Then at the end (no spoiler alert, don't worry) she tries to get all her deep thoughts down. There are high brow (and i mean that in the most complimentary way) moments throughout. Deep thoughts. Insightful observations about love, loss of innocence, disappointment (professional and personal). The NYC private school scene is a bit hyperbolic (amazingly not that hyperbolic! ) but there are some profound moments that make you think. People told me they laughed a lot. I didn't really. It is a little too sad and on the nose to laugh and the rest is a little too cliche. Women showing crotch shots on online dating profiles type stuff. I like books about relationships and this certainly have several perspectives on a couple of different situations. I would have liked the end to be more about the main characters than the author's final thoughts but it was a pleasant enough read. Light enough to plow through, insightful enough to be much more than Danielle Steele.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2023I LOVED this book for the first 60% or so (read it on Kindle so I don’t know pages numbers.) Smart, very funny while also deeply sad with a lot of hurt and anger and over the top impersonal sexual acrobatics. The the sadness got thicker and the humor and delightful language turned into harangue and WILDLY overstated angst of the privileged, and I skimmed the last 30 pps or so wanting it just to end. Lots of highlighted passages, wonderful observations about people, relationships, class, life …. But in the end a story that lost its way.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2019After reading a newspaper review I bought this for my kindle...... (I had never heard of the author before, or read any of her work.) I read the novel in 3 days, spurred on by the question of what happened to the missing wife.....I was intrigued by the plot, annoyed by the characters, and interested in the writing style...
Actually, this is a “cautionary tale,” an example of misplaced values and very poor choices....The characters are annoying because this is satire, and the humor here is rather dark, not the kind that makes me laugh out loud. I expected a story about a man, and found it to be also about women’s issues and points of view. It is about a family in devastating, disastrous emotional pain, their backstory revealed little by little until we understand something of how they got into such a mess.
The ending doesn’t wrap things up neatly, but does leave a little room for possibilities .....maybe....
- Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2025The author has an incredible way with words. I gave hit four stars because at some points, it seemed liked the author was beating a dead horse. Basically it was too long. The story, points and emotions described could have been made with about 1/3 less words. That said, as a working mom now divorcee, I definitely related to and enjoyed the story.
Top reviews from other countries
- Ellie McGrathReviewed in Italy on July 22, 2024
1.0 out of 5 stars At Best, a Deftly Managed Marketing Coup
A waste of my time. I realised half way through this novel that this is one of those books that has been 'managed' from start to finish, regardless of the worthy and interesting plot. The whole thing is very 'New York', which is fine, but the cranium scraping of these privileged and not particularly exceptional characters while, at times, amusing, never amounts to anything more than a puff of smoke from her publishers' marketing engine. These are whingy characters with no depth. In the end, I was bored.
- Michelle BReviewed in France on September 19, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it
Witty and incredibly well-written.
-
CatharinaReviewed in Germany on August 16, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Reifeprozess als Folge einer Reflexion über Lebensentscheidungen.
Das Scheitern einer Ehe wird so dargestellt, dass die betroffenen Personen während der Darstellung immer ehrlicher mit sich werden und so in Reife wachsen, wobei die Problemen so beschrieben werden, dass man sich gut in beide Parteien hinein versetzen kann, auch wenn die Geschichte im Detail doch eine eher Upper Class New York Story ist.
- Siddharth BanerjeeReviewed in India on June 10, 2021
1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible
The worse book I’ve ever read! Wish I could get a refund.
-
Arturo G.Reviewed in Mexico on May 21, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente presentación
Esperemos el contenido esté de igual manera!