Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel (Unabridged)
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3.7 • 161 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST • “A masterpiece” (NPR) about marriage, divorce, and the bewildering dynamics of ambition
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
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Withering wit and stealth feminism fill Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s pithy, poignant tale of love, marriage, and friendship. Toby Fleishman is a divorced New York City doctor. When his ex-wife, Rachel, drops their kids off at his place and uncharacteristically disappears without a word, he’s pretty rattled. He leans on his old college friends Seth and Libby for support, and it’s Libby who narrates the story, skipping around chronologically to analyze the Fleishmans’ marriage as well as the three friends’ complicated bond. This clever setup gives Libby room to reveal as much about her own struggles as Toby’s, and Brodesser-Akner uses the device to brilliantly deal with the impossible expectations placed on women. And we do mean brilliantly: She wields satire like a lethal weapon one moment and delivers a true emotional gut punch the next. Allyson Ryan’s nuanced narration nails both the bone-dry humor and the raw emotionality. We laughed and winced through this astute novel.
Customer Reviews
Boring and too long
Hated this book. Very digressing, I often felt lost in the narrative. Too much unnecessary information that had no value for the story. I felt that there was no proper ending.
Don’t waist your time with this book
Fleishmans in trouble
Terrible. No plot. All unnecessary sex on every page. Needs a story.