Synopses & Reviews
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
"Just the sort of thing that Philip Roth or John Updike might have produced in their prime (except, of course, that the author understands women)." Elizabeth Gilbert
"This is a remarkable debut from one of the most distinctive writers around." Tom Perrotta
A finely observed, timely exploration of marriage, divorce, and the bewildering dynamics of ambition from one of the most exciting writers working today
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.
Review
"Whip-smart, gleefully scatological . . . [Brodesser-Akner] aims a perfect gimlet eye at the city's relentless self-regard." Entertainment Weekly
Review
"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...The result is a maddening, unsettling masterpiece, and, yes, you will be moved and inexplicably grateful at the end." NPR
Review
"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
Review
"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. It's wild and wonderful and goes in so many directions, each with profundity — my favorite thing that novels can do. How does one's favorite journalist become one's new favorite novelist? With this book." Emma Straub
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.