I really hated this book, the people in it were insufferable and the book was so meandering. Basically nothing was redeeming about it and I regret even having finished it.

I am not sure this book knew what it wanted to be. The Fleishmans are getting a divorce, but they seem to hold equal status throughout the book with Toby's friends. At first it felt distracting and then I realized that it was an ongoing actual part of the overall story. It seemed to divide my attention. I wasn't sure who to watch. Toby Fleishman is presented as a sympathetic, but somewhat passive, character. While still working as a doctor, Toby is the primary housekeeper and caregiver to their two children. I have no problem with this position for a man but it seemed to be presented as an issue. Rachel seems to have mentally abandoned the family and then actually does. So when she is reintroduced near the end of the story, it was incredibly difficult to feel any sympathy for her and her plight. While I generally like a story that keeps me on my toes, it was a bit too much and I just finished the book not caring for the grownups and  feeling sorry for the kids.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is such an interesting writer. She is a keen observer of people, and has really populated her novel with whole characters.

I've been a long time fan of Taffy Brodesser-Akner's profiles and was very excited to read her debut novel - it did not disappoint!

I was looking forward to reading Fleishman Is In Trouble, as it had varied reviews. Unfortunately, I could not finish it, simply because I did not enjoy the style of the writing and the plot. I realize that reading books other than one's usual interests is key in literature, however I had to put this one down.

What a quirky book! I don’t even know what to think other than Fleischmann am my experience with divorce were quite different. It was a fun book but nothing that’s going to stick with me for long other than me thinking that was interesting.

This was a slow burn, but once I got into it, I couldn't stop. It's a feminist novel masquerading as a novel about a man sleeping with a ton of women post-divorce. My only complaint is that I was distracted by the third-person narrator who was also a character in the novel. It was an interesting narrative device, but ultimately distracting. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters, though, and I liked seeing their growth throughout the novel.

This book was fairly enjoyable, though I was so indifferent to the main character (Toby Fleishman) that I found it hard to feel any emotions about him. I wasn't even particularly curious about where his life was going - more than anything, I kept reading the book because I was interested in some of the minor characters, and because the writing itself was enjoyable to read. It's possible that this book exposed some realities to people who otherwise wouldn't have recognized them in being almost a parody, but it didn't go quite far enough for me.

Brodesser-Akner has managed to lend her singular voice—honed by her ability to make celebrity profiles and interviews in magazines and newspapers appealing—to this debut work of fiction. From the first pages you can tell you’re in no ordinary book. There’s humor and energy and lots of really great details and observations about the titular Fleishman.

So many of us have troubled marriages. So many of us are trying to work out our differences with our spouse and try to keep our marriage together or work out an amicable divorce.  but somehow this book was so hard for me to get through.  I started it multiple times and could not get into it.

Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner....



But I was determined and finally came back to it and pushed my way through.  I did not like any of the characters.  Especially not Fleishman.  He is a doctor working in a New York hospital, with a good reputation as a surgeon.  he has two young children who he seems to care more about than his wife.  His wife who is missing for most of the book, is a social climbing snob, who is working hard to keep up with Jones on the upper West Side of the City.  She is not really a warm fuzzy parent.  She is working hard at her own job to make money to keep the family living in the lifestyle she has always aspired to.  She does not really seem to care if Fleishman or the children want that life.  It is what she needs.



So now the marriage is estranged and she is missing and Fleishman has the children for the summer and has to balance child care and work.  If that were all it was I would sympathize with him, but the author has added in this, what I think is, sick sex fantasy.  He spends his time on dating websites that cater to women looking for sex, but not a longterm relationship.  he is constantly looking at texts from women begging him to have sex and sending pictures of themselves.  I found this very unrealistic and low.  It made the women look bad and it made him look degenerate.



When his daughter gets in trouble for sending a picture of herself to a boy she is trying to attract the camp sends her home, and Fleishman is upset that she would think so unkindly about herself to do what this boy asked her to do.  When his son is caught looking at porn sites on the computer Fleishman is also upset.  But he never seems to see how they are doing exactly what he is doing and he sees nothing wrong with his own behavior.



The book also tells the story from the viewpoint of an old girlfriend who also has personal problems, smoking pot and drinking, when she should be appreciating the life she has with a loving husband and children. In the end we do hear the story from the viewpoint of the wife, but it may a bit too late, for any sympathy in her direction.  But I will admit that once I was reading her view, I could sort of see how the marriage had fallen apart..  maybe they can repair the damage.

I feel like I need more time to think this one over - it wasn’t bad, not at all! What a wonderful debut!!

Absolutely loved this book, what a debut from Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Brilliantly written, cleverly structured, and complex characters that you alternately root for and against. I can't wait to see what she writes next, as this was one of my favorite books of 2019.

There are typically two sides to every story. Taffy Brodesser-Akner tells the story is such a way that you’re sure black is black and white is white until the end when everything revealed is grey. This story has relatable characters doing understandable things, until they’re not.

I really wanted to like this book but had trouble relating with the characters and found it repetitive or wordy in places.

This is not what I was expecting. What starts as the incredibly sexual exploits of a middle aged man going through divorce turns into a meditation on just about everything- gender, marriage, work, midlife crises, parenting, and don’t forget sex sex sex. It’s raunchy and nasty but as the story unfolds (and the narrator is more fully revealed) everything we take for granted at the start becomes more complicated.

I couldn’t stand Toby, but this is a book that I couldn’t stop reading. It was just pitch perfect without being preachy. Also, it’s hilarious. 5 stars.

Fleishmans are Us

Fleishman Is In Trouble, the debut novel by magazine writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner, reflects a troubled group of forty-ish New Yorkers questioning the choices that lead to the unsatisfying lives they live now. Toby and Rachel Fleishman are so freshly divorced we are witness to many of their first interactions with faux sympathetic friends–”how are you” is always really “what exactly happened?” A surgeon with low ambitions and two preteens, Toby takes over all of the parenting responsibilities from their ambitious and suddenly completely absent mother Rachel when a granola weekend away turns into an AWOL sitch. And while Toby and family inhabit an upper crust NY world filled with private schools, bat mitzvah lessons, and yoga classes, he hates it and himself for taking advantage of the privileges paid for by his very wealthy now ex and scrolls his “dating” (hooking up) apps enjoying a quite lively single sex life for the first time ever.

Rachel’s story takes over the second half of the book, all the while our omnipresent narrator is Toby’s college friend Libby (who never moved out of the friend zone) who is experiencing her own identity crisis out in New Jersey with her own two kids and a seemingly perfect to the point of boring husband. She sees her unhappy self fairly clearly but is unable to do more than rebel with cigarettes and nights in Manhattan like those of her youth. Her character tells more than the story here and Brodesser-Akner delves deep while keeping an energetic pace with astute observations that paint a realistic and completely entertaining picture of four (the fourth is college friend Seth: a boy-man money-maker experiencing his own midlife issues) lives falling apart just at a time when stuff should be settling into perfectly good place.  

Wendy Ward
http://wendyrward.tumblr.com/

Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a slow-building tale about Toby. He's recently separated from his wife of fifteen years. He's dealing with the newness of dating via apps and texts, co-raising his two young children, and working as a busy doctor. Suddenly his life is turned upside down when his former wife unexpectedly drops his children off and fails to return to pick them up. Lots of ups and downs in this novel. Read and enjoy!

I’ve started and abandoned several dysfunctional family dramas lately and so I stuck this one out even when I wanted to give it up.

This is a novel about many things, the brave, new (some would say horrible) world we live in, the expectations placed on women, the way marriage, middle age and motherhood can really mess with your head and sense of self. This book has a ton of sex but it is not sexy...

It is very much about being in your early 40s and having a kind of mid life crisis.

At times it was too painfully familiar... particularly the pressure of motherhood stuff.

Great book, with a great turn at the end that I didn’t see coming but really appreciated and made me think twice about my own assumptions.

This is a great exploration on coping with changes in life changes, gender roles, how relationships evolve, etc. At first it seems odd to be so focused on the husband, yet narrated by his college friend who he's barely seen in 20 years, but later it becomes clear -- still it's a bit odd that she knows as much detail as she does.

Other than that, there are some amazing scenes and lines as Toby and Rachel navigate their marriage, careers, ambition, parenthood, etc. How the words themselves can be interpreted so many different ways in conversation -- one person's rational is another person's angry, and the lack of empathy and understanding keeps building until the breaking point.

The perspectives on striving vs. complacency and how dynamics work with strains like money, social pressure, work demands and everything else are very vividly portrayed, and having Toby's many worlds -- college friends, school parents, work colleagues, online dating hookups, etc. provide many outlets but also demands on him.

A very well-written and plotted novel about how far we still have to go even in modern, well-meaning areas to overcome political maneuvering, gender stereotype roles, and just understanding each other without stereotypes and bias getting in the way, and finding the perspective to understand how one's expectations and memories put pressure on people as they evolve in relationships.

I received a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed the story as well as the viewpoints from different sides of the narrative. But was extremely confusing to me when narration would switch from third person to first person.  This happened frequently throughout the book and I always had to ask myself who this first person was. Spoiler alert, it is always Libby. Not sure why the author chose to write in the style but it made it very jarring to read.