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Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

3.9 17,916 ratings

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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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

From the Publisher

The New York Times bestseller, now a streaming series

Editorial Reviews

Review

“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

About the Author

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. She has also written for GQ, ESPN the Magazine, and many other publications. Fleishman Is in Trouble is her first novel.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Toby Fleishman awoke one morning inside the city he’d lived in all his adult life and which was suddenly somehow now crawling with women who wanted him. Not just any women, but women who were self-actualized and independent and knew what they wanted. Women who weren’t needy or insecure or self-doubting, like the long-ago prospects of his long-gone youth—meaning the women he had thought of as prospects but who had never given him even a first glance. No, these were women who were motivated and available and interesting and interested and exciting and excited. These were women who would not so much wait for you to call them one or two or three socially acceptable days after you met them as much as send you pictures of their genitals the day before. Women who were open-minded and up for anything and vocal about their desires and needs and who used phrases like “put my cards on the table” and “no strings attached” and “I need to be done in ten because I have to pick up Bella from ballet.” Women who would fuck you like they owed you money, was how our friend Seth put it.

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

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07H71LX88
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House (June 18, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 18, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5148 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 380 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #103,124 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #43 in Literary Satire Fiction
- #325 in Satire Fiction
- #736 in Contemporary Literary Fiction

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3.9 17,916 ratings

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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.

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JSD

Brilliant, complex narrative that may just double as free therapy

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2019

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I 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.

36 people found this helpful

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Barbara A. Edelman

The first 100 reviews you read here are accurate, positive & negative

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2021

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Yes, it’s too long & narrative structure gets annoying. Some of the characters are total dicks & many are not particularly likeable, tho likeability of characters is a non-issue for me.

BUT…after about 30 pages, i flipped to the last page & then read the final 20 pages to find out WHAT HAPPENED?? where is she & how did she get there?? i wanted to know the in between enough to read it in 2 sittings.

I know that my way of reading fiction-especially suspenseful stories-isn’t for everyone, but once i knew how it ended, i was fully immersed in the storytelling.

The description of a character’s progression into a mental breakdown is gripping & devastating. I could almost physically feel a character’s period of a week or so of sleeplessness.

Another stand out for me was diagnosis & treatment of a patient of Toby’s, a storyline which runs episodically throughout the story.

So it’s a mixed bag, but on the whole, a good one.

8 people found this helpful

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K. Fitch

Really good - until it was terrible

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2023

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I 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.

9 people found this helpful

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Claire - plants.and.romance

One of my all-time favorites!

Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2023

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This book is so much more than a father going through a divorce who suddenly finds himself with full custody of his children. This book shows you gender roles in marriage, work, society, and friendship and how they can affect the married couple. With that said, this book is somewhat relatable for mothers/wives who have clueless husbands, or husbands who simply have too much on their plate… for example - pay attention to your other half to help prevent them from spiraling out of control, because chances are, you will notice they are spiraling before they can tell what's going on with them, and you can help them or find help before the worst part of the damage is done and to help catch you when you fall. This book shows you that you need someone, whether it is a spouse or friend, but preferably both of those.

I loved the writing style of this book and the narration by Allyson Ryan. I can't wait to read Taffy's coming works and see what the future holds for her.

THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU IF: You love a glimpse into a failing marriage with some modern takes and struggles that will keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat.

4 people found this helpful

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Michael Liebowitz

Seeing both sides

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2024

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I spent the first part of this wonderfully well-told story despising one of the characters. And then the story flipped to her perspective and I found myself feeling sorry for her. I didn’t get the resolution I’d hoped for but maybe that’s okay—and that’s kind of what the author seemed to be going for.

One person found this helpful

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Cynthia L. White

This book is about expectations.

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2023

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Such a well written, complex story about family, friends, social expectations and desires.
The narrative is very interesting, introspective and very funny. It is also sad. The story is a real definition of what is expected of women in their relationships and their work. The desire to be more is often not appreciated or understood.
Lots of sex, but not in an exploitive way more in a way that explains the characters.
Told from three perspectives the book tells the whole story really well.

9 people found this helpful

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Michelle B

Loved it

Reviewed in France on September 19, 2021

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Witty and incredibly well-written.

Catharina

Reifeprozess als Folge einer Reflexion über Lebensentscheidungen.

Reviewed in Germany on August 16, 2021

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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.

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Siddharth Banerjee

Horrible

Reviewed in India on June 10, 2021

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The worse book I’ve ever read! Wish I could get a refund.

Arturo G.

Excelente presentación

Reviewed in Mexico on May 21, 2020

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Esperemos el contenido esté de igual manera!

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Rose

Highly recommended

Reviewed in Canada on October 12, 2019

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A very witty observation of life, youth, divorce, internet dating, living in New York, disappointments and small victories and also of working women and their ambition in this day. Loved it

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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