Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Ms. Brodesser-Akner is a well-known writer for NYTimes, GQ, NYMagazine, but this is her first novel. And what a début!

Meet Toby, a 40 something newly divorced doctor; short (emphasized in the book), a good dad and living in New York. His ex-wife Rachel, a highly successful actor-agent is constantly reaching for the perfect life for herself and her family. Toby and Rachel have two ‘tweens’, who find themselves are thrown in at the deep end of the divorce, but both kids love their parents very much.

Then – with a hint of ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘Where’d you go Bernadette’ – Rachel disappears. She doesn’t return calls, she doesn’t go to work – she simply disappears. Toby has no idea what’s going on. He flips between being mad at her for not showing up, picking up the kids etc AND messing up his new dating life on multiple media platforms and believing that Rachel has died and worrying how her disappearance will effect their kids and their childhood.

It’s not a crime like Gone Girl, but much more in the league of novels by Maria Semple and Nicole Krauss, with a mix of tragic and comic. It is a very readable début about marriage at midlife, and how difficult it can be to live a modern life – even on New York’s Upper East Side with private schools and wealthy social circles. The seemingly perfect life is not always a happy life.

The book has three main narrators. It is mostly Toby’s story but we also hear from Libby, an old friend of Toby’s, who also struggles with modern life and marriage. The novel also reaches back into Toby and Libby’s college years.

While Rachel’s disappearance is more of a ‘character’ than Rachel herself, she does get her say at the end of the book, showing once again that there are, of course, always, two sides to every story. Rachel’s story actually nailed the book for me. Her reflections on the complexities of her life and their family life, and of how we as human beings have a need to feel a sense of belonging are very on point, and will bring Brodesser-Akner across the Atlantic as a writer.

Pick it up if you liked…’Where’d you go Bernadette’ by Maria Semple.

Happy reading!

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Hannah Gough2 March 2020