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Sign up todayFleishman Is in Trouble
A Novel
Narrator
Allyson Ryan
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Length
14 hours 34 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“At the independent bookshop where I work, there was a lot of buzz about this book. Sometimes buzz makes me nervous – will the book live up to it? – but in this case, it was well deserved. Following the story of a recently divorced dad trying to reenter the world of dating and take care of his kids, it’s part parody, part commentary of the times we live in. The writing is so insightful. I loved, too, that the narrator was a third party – a childhood friend of Toby Fleishman’s – as this added a layer to both the story and the commentary. In particular, I found myself nodding a lot at the commentary about twenty-first century motherhood. And the yoga tops! It’s worth a read for the collection of yoga top slogans alone.”
— Claire • East City Bookshop
Bookseller recommendation
“Fleishman Is in Trouble is a feat of point-of-view like no other book I've read. What starts out seeming like a 'guy's' book (no strings internet sex and dating post-divorce) gradually hints that not all is what it seems here - namely, why is Toby Fleishman's old friend Libby telling the story of his divorce and newfound dating life? Whose story is this, and who gets to tell it? I was surprisingly moved—even gut punched—by this brilliantly constructed novel. ”
— Rachel • The Book Table
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
Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine. Prior to that, her work appeared in GQ, ESPN the Magazine, Matter, Details, Texas Monthly, Outside, Self, Cosmopolitan and many other publications. Fleishman Is In Trouble is her first novel.
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Reviews
“Believe the hype. Fleishman Is in Trouble is even better than we were promised. . . . 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.”—The Washington Post“Brodesser-Akner . . . writes with a thrilling swagger. . . . She does not so much craft prose as notate brainwaves.”—The New Yorker
“Everybody I know loves reading Taffy Brodesser-Akner. . . . A maddening, unsettling masterpiece”—NPR
“Whip-smart, gleefully scatological . . . [Brodesser-Akner] aims a perfect gimlet eye at the city’s relentless self-regard . . . transforming a fizzy comedy of manners into something genuinely, unexpectedly profound.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Enthralling . . . A cutting sociological dissection of the way we live.”—Rolling Stone
“The Taffy Brodesser-Akner trick, the thing that makes her profiles so clear-eyed and important, the thing that lifts her divorce novel head and shoulders above so many others in its genre: She is always willing to extend her empathy to people we are trained to believe are not worthy of our consideration. She is always willing to treat them as real people.”—Vox
“This glorious debut has the humor of Maria Semple, the heart of Meg Wolitzer, the lustiness of Philip Roth, and a voice that is pure. How does one's favorite journalist become one's new favorite novelist? With this book.”—Emma Straub
“Brodesser-Akner’s debut is a referendum on marriage, friendship, and how we live (and love) right now.”—People
“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 . . . 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. 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.”—Women’s Health
“Firing on all circuits, from psychological insight to cultural acuity to narrative strategy to very smart humor.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A sardonically cheerful novel that readers will adore.”—Publishers Weekly
“Brodesser-Akner proves herself a master of startlingly true invention in her enthralling, affirming debut of midlife, marital, and existential despair. . . . Shrewd and delectable, this would be a novel to savor, if it were possible to put down.”—Booklist Expand reviews
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