Fleishman Is in Trouble
Author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Publisher: Random House
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Recently separated Toby Fleishman is suddenly, somehow — and at age forty-one, short as ever — surrounded by women who want him: women who are self-actualized, women who are smart and interesting, women who don't mind his height, women who are eager to take him for a test drive with just the swipe of an app. Toby doesn't mind being used in this way; it's a welcome change from the thirteen years he spent as a married man, the thirteen years of emotional neglect and contempt he's just endured. Anthropologically speaking, it's like nothing he ever experienced before, particularly back in the 1990s, when he first began dating and became used to swimming in the murky waters of rejection.
But Toby's new life — liver specialist by day, kids every other weekend, rabid somewhat anonymous sex at night--is interrupted when his ex-wife suddenly disappears. Either on a vision quest or a nervous breakdown, Toby doesn't know — she won't answer his texts or calls.
Is Toby's ex just angry, like always? Is she punishing him, yet again, for not being the bread winner she was? As he desperately searches for her while juggling his job and parenting their two unraveling children, Toby is forced to reckon with the real reasons his marriage fell apart, and to ask if the story he has been telling himself all this time is true.
TL;DR Review
Fleishman Is in Trouble is a digestible, easy-to-read novel that takes a hard look at privilege, relationships, and the expectations we put on ourselves and others. I enjoyed it!
For you if: You’re looking for a contemporary, commercial fiction read that will make you think a little more about what it means to be human.
Full Review
“A wife isn’t like an ultra-girlfriend or a permanent girlfriend. She’s an entirely new thing. She’s something you made together, with you as an ingredient. She couldn’t be the wife without you.”
OK, so I'm late to the party on this one, but with it being longlisted for both the National Book Award and this year's Women's Prize, I was never not going to pick it up eventually!
It's about a man named Toby Fleishman who is in the midst of a divorce when his wife appears to ditch them all. Suddenly he has to navigate single fatherdom and confront the reality of the path that led him to where he is today. The whole story is told from the POV of one of Toby’s college friends (sort of — she does go really far into Toby’s POV that you forget she’s technically narrating sometimes). I thought that was a fun and interesting choice.
I liked this one; I enjoyed it. It's a story that makes you want to know how it's going to end, with really flawed, complex characters who exist in conjunction with one another in a very real way. That's a hard thing to pinpoint in fiction.
One thing it does VERY well is describe the absolute roller coaster of emotions that people can feel within the span of one day, one hour. The way Brodesser-Akner puts Toby through the ringer of his own emotions is super relatable. He’s just a flawed but well-meaning guy trying to find himself, and that’s hard work.
There was a little too much focus on Toby's lusty escapades and privileged people feeling like a $275K salary is low for me to LOVE it, but I can also see how these choices allowed the story itself to do the thing it was trying to do. In the end, it says some powerful thins. So I can see why so many people have liked this one!
Trigger Warnings
Pregnancy or childbirth
Medical abuse
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