Fleishman is in Trouble Discussion!

[moosishun]

Hey!  I read it!  I had to skim towards the end because it was tiring my butt out, but I think I might go back and take a second look.  But but but, I was still interested in it enough to read it in a day, even with a pup who came to me with the leash in his mouth.   I have to say that I would not have read it except for Book Club but of course, I am glad I did.  

So here you are and here I am.   If you have read this book, there is a book review in the Washington Post and it is very interesting, especially in the comments section.  In fact, I think it gives a little too much away and I am glad I did not read it before I read the book, so if you have not read this book, don't read the WaPo review.  ARE ALL REVIEWS LIKE THIS?  

Anyhow, here is my question:

Did you like it?  Why or why not?   (I think this book will strike all kinds of chords because I could see many varying degrees of hate-like a little-like a lot-loved it loved it loved it).  If the comments are anything like the ones in the Washington Post, there will be a richness in the views of both the hates and the likes, I think.  

Were there any big surprises/twists that caught you off-guard?  

This is just to get you started, because today's question is a big fat free-for-all, and you may steer this conversation anywhere you would like.  

Just to let you know, I think there is a richness of themes that are found in this novel, and I hope to explore them tomorrow, but you can talk about them now!  Ha!

[gemster]

I’ve only just finished and was massively skimming by the end but no I didn’t like the book much which is why I struggled so much to finish it. I think my dislike was down to the characters mainly as I didn’t really warm to any of them or particularly care what happened to them, and I would definitely have abandoned this one pretty early on if it hadn’t been for book club.

[moosishun]

I think the hard thing about portraying some major character flaws in people you might end up liking has the result of you saying, "Hey, I see there are good things to you but I don't want to be around you to experience them because those other things about you DRIVE ME CRAZY." At the same time, I think we all come with at least one major flaw and the glory of humanity is that there is somebody(ies) out there who sees enough about us to let us into a very rich friendship and will even give us a little slack.

I think, like one commenter on the WaPo, I came out surprisingly with a stronger liking for Rachel and a stronger disliking for Toby at the end. He really is, as Libby said, sort of an asshole. His awkward way of trying to get Jeannie in way deeper to a relationship (who in heaven's name would ask a first date to meet their kids??) and then absolutely picking out every physical flaw of Narina's (I probably get these names wrong because I am like that and too lazy to go back and look) was so asshole-y to me that I was not nearly so sad that he did not get that promotion. And also, to cross that line with a person under your tutelage is so abhorrent to me personally that I was close to hating him right then and there.

I also tired of someone who has to settle for $200K a year, although if you want to live in grand style in NYC, that really is not nearly enough to do that.

And why can't Rachel learn how to hire people that are as good as herself so she can divine the sweet art of DELEGATION?

[moosishun]

Now that I think of it, TOBY WAS AN ASSHOLE. And a super-whiny one, if you ask me. Ha! That bit about Jeannie and Narina and MONA, for god's sakes.

Oh, yeah, I could hate him! Ha!

But then, he had developed a bedside manner with his patients. That is very helpful and extremely lovable to us patients.

[honeybzzzs]

This is a first for me. I have never skimmed a book before, and especially I have never skimmed one so heavily. Most of the time just a sentence or two per page. (Oh, he’s still talking about on-line dating conquests, etc)

I agree with Gemster.

Off to read the comments on the Washington Post.

[ccToast]

I have not finished it yet, so I'll be joining later this week.

[moosishun]

So, honeybzzzs, what turned you into a skimmer? I do think there were some sweet literary gems in this book, one being the big twist that this ended up being a first person narrative. I thought my head was exploding at first.

[sal]

I loved it.

I definitely started out hating Rachel, but very much didn't by the end, though I was very frustrated by her. I really liked how the author wove in the explanations for certain "horrible" Rachel things during the second half of the book and made you go "...oh!" (the Chinese food springs immediately to mind) In many ways, they were just somewhat bad for each other, compounded by lack of true communication.

On a side note, did anyone in here ever watch Orphan Black? Because I totally kept picturing Rachel as the Rachel clone in that show: smart, rich, rather brittle, biting in her commentary, "perfect" bobbed hair and designer wardrobe. And then at certain points later in the book could see her more as one of the hot mess clones, because, well.

[moosishun]

I thought it was rather sweet of Libby to show her hand that she likes happy endings because I knew then and there that Rachel was not going to be the completely hate-able person she was being made out to be.

My favorite character of all is ADAM. And of course, Solly and Bubbles.

[princesscheezits]

I read this book out of pure adoration for its author Taffy Brodesser-Akner. She is the queen of the celebrity interview/deep dive.

I, too, started out really #teamtoby and then decided HE was the a-hole and the Fleishman in trouble, was Rachel. Also, being of a similar age and married for almost 15 years, I was intrigued by the portrayal of this couple and their challenges. And holy hell, all the sex Joel had? Wow.

I can't say I loved the book - in some ways it was very difficult for me to read from the relationship POV - but it was certainly entertaining and a unique way to tell a story.

[lilybbb]

I really loved this book. Unfortunately, I had it on Kindle library loan and had to return a couple weeks ago, so I'm going to have trouble commenting without kind of specific prompts that job my memory.

I can't see the Washington Post review because I'm not a subscriber. I've never heard of Orphan Black.

[honeybzzzs]

moosishun,
The repetitiveness got to me. “Ok! I Got It! Let’s move along with the story already!”

And then, after Rachel disappeared, he never went by her place to see if she was still alive? Sent out a well-check? Your children’s mother disappears off the face of the earth and you just shrug your shoulders and say “That’s just Rachel”. I’m not buying.

[lilybbb]

Apr 20, 2020 7:58:56 GMT -5 princesscheezits said:

Taffy Brodesser-Akner. She is the queen of the celebrity interview/deep dive

I'd never heard of her!

But this makes sense because one of the things I liked about the book was the journalistic perspective. In the very first section, I was thinking what an interesting choice it was by the author to have an actual person be the narrator. It seemed when I first started reading that it was written in limited third person, obviously with emphasis on Toby, but when it became apparent the narrator would also be part of the story, it actually reminded me of how Nick is the narrator in The Great Gatsby.

[gemster]

Solly was my absolute favourite, I felt so sorry for him.

I did not like Toby at all, I thought he was annoying and whiny from the beginning which is probably why I struggled so much to get into the book. I hated all the dating stuff and same as honeybzzzs completely skimmed those bits. I did sympathise more with Rachel at the end but would not go so far as to say I liked her.

I’d not heard of the author before and don’t have access to the Washington post so can’t read the review there. 

I think this just really isn’t my kind of book, I was going to sit it out as it didn’t appeal to me at all when it was nominated and I should have probably stuck with that decision.  

[bernelli]

I've never heard of this author before this book.

I hated it while I was reading it because it's a glass-half-empty story with unlikeable characters who aren't happy with anyone or anything and this quality made it impossible for me to see how they'd created intimate relationships with ANYONE.

BUT, when I figured out who the narrator was, I thought, "aha, the author is up to something." Later I learned the author was a female writer for GQ & ESPN (predominantly men's magazines). My reading-disgruntlement and frustration led me to believe that she must have hated working for those men's magazines and wonder if she had kids and did she go through a divorce. ...I didn't go so far as to stalk her though (which surprises me).

I still don't like this book, and mostly because the characters are horrible people. All of them, except for that sweet little boy (Toby/Rachel's son). I had to return my library book and I didn't take notes.

But there were some huge revelations in this book for me. The sense of loss of self through parenthood/marriage... the postpartum depression (it does bother me that postpartum was never considered for Rachel, and I feel so angry about that having gone through it but not to the severity that Rachel did). I'll save my rants about the really interesting portrayal of loss of self as we age for later in the week.

I did not like this story, but it's going to be great for conversation.

[lilybbb]

Interesting how many people are commenting what horrible people the characters are. I don't think so at all. They are just people who have positive traits as well as flaws. It's fascinating to me how much influence narrative perspective has on our opinions of them, though--which is probably something we should consider when evaluating anyone, whether it be a celebrity, politician, or personal acquaintance.

Just having read the Hanks profile Cheezits posted colors this viewpoint, as well. Particularly the comments about whether the mask is the man or the man is the mask resonate with Bernelli's point about loss of self.

I did an exercise in a writing workshop once that I then used frequently when teaching writing: Spend five minutes to write a journal entry reflecting on who you are, that you will never be asked to share. Next, we spent five minutes writing an introduction of ourselves to the class. Finally, we spent five minutes writing about the differences in the two pieces. For many people, it was harder to write the introduction, but for me, it was much more difficult to write the personal journal entry.

[moosishun]

I was so impressed that the author knew about Maryland and placed all the locations correctly. That scored a few points for me.

[moosishun]

I think you can access the Washington Post for a few free articles, but maybe not. Let's see if I can help this out a little:

www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/now-that-weve-all-read-fleishman-is-in-trouble-lets-talk-about-the-ending/2019/09/30/ff2172e2-e38d-11e9-a6e8-8759c5c7f608_story.html

[bumblebuzz21]

Just finished. I really liked it. I like reading about flawed characters, because it makes me feel better about myself I'm a liver transplant coordinator, so I liked the hepatology stuff (except they are called ultrasounds, not sonograms and doctors most definitely do not do them).

[Viognier]

Not reading any comments at this point because I'm not done reading yet and don't want spoilers to really throw me off!
I do want to say that part of my struggle is with two things: who is speaking, is this about Fleishman or the narrator and it seems to change randomly without notice so that I have to go back several paragraphs or even pages to get my bearings again and two: the lists of options that go on and on and on. There was one section that was at least a page long of this or that, the first or this other. Isn't there some kind of rule of three?
Hopefully I'll be back later in the week after I've read more of the book.

[sal]

Not sure if this will work, but trying to just copy the WaPo article here, because its worth talking about:

The following story contains spoilers for the novel “Fleishman Is in Trouble.”

There’s a beloved passage from Philip Roth’s “American Pastoral” that never fails to leave me flattened. The charmed main character, “the Swede,” is about to watch his perfect world implode; but the true tragedy, Roth insists (through alter-ego narrator, Nathan Zuckerman), was that he was never equipped to predict it, and that no one ever is — because the people we build our lives around are essentially unknowable. “You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations,” Roth, as Zuckerman, writes, “without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance . . . and yet you never fail to get them wrong. . . . You get them wrong before you meet them, while you’re anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you’re with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. . . . And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of ‘other people’ . . . so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another’s interior workings and invisible aims?”

Deflating as it may be, I’m often drawn back to this, mystified. Can you ever really know the people you know so well, or predict the ways their true natures will unfold? What are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people? “Fleishman is in Trouble,” this summer’s hit novel (and future TV series) by the celebrated profile writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner, left me flattened, too, for much the same reason. Is divorce, Brodesser-Akner seems to ask, always a function of getting other people wrong; of inevitably missing a million crucial things about them?

On the surface, the finely observed, inhalable debut novel is about Toby Fleishman, a 41-year-old Manhattan hepatologist and father of tweenagers finally getting his life back after divorcing his maternally resentful, social-climbing talent agent wife Rachel. But just as he’s exploring a brave new world of dating app sexts and wildly available bedfellows, Rachel drops off the kids, heads to a yoga retreat and goes missing for weeks.

The real story of what happens to Rachel — and that of Rachel, herself — is likewise MIA for most of the book, as this is a book about a man, and all the grievances and slights he’s finally empowered to combat. Brodesser-Akner, who’s drawn comparisons to Roth for the novel’s lust and neuroses and super-specific American Jewishness (and who’s professed her die-hard love for the writer), employs her own Zuckermanesque alter ego, Libby Epstein, to narrate the summer of sexual freedom of her old study abroad pal, Toby. Where Nathan is wholly present in the beginning of “Pastoral” and then retreats in later chapters to the role of omniscient narrator, Libby does the opposite, first piping up intermittently in service of examining Toby’s life; and then revealing herself to be a singular character who’s really examining her own.

The novel has drawn raves and sparked thoughtful conversations about where women fit into a male-centric narrative — and whether that’s only after they’ve managed to wedge themselves in. Libby lost touch with Toby after he got married, but the divorce finds him seeking to reconnect with old friends, spurring out-of-the-blue calls to her and their mutual friend, Seth. Libby’s happy to have been gifted a portal to her freewheeling youth, as adulthood has consistently made her feel sidelined — first as an under-considered female writer at a men’s magazine, and now as a suburban mom and housewife in New Jersey. (Broddeser-Akner also had an illustrious career at a men’s magazine, GQ; and like Libby, grew up in Brooklyn and went to NYU and studied abroad in Israel and is a mom of two in New Jersey and has never quite kicked her smoking habit; and Roth really did grow up with a guy called “the Swede,” but I digress.) Her domesticated existence resembles everyone else’s in her neighborhood, making her feel unspecial, unseen; and the middle-aged phase of marriage has left her disillusioned. “At some point, I didn’t remember when, I had taken all my freedom and independence, and pushed them across the poker table at [my husband] Adam and said, ‘Here, take my jackpot. Take it all. I don’t need it anymore. I won’t miss it ever.’ ”

When Libby re-connects with newly single Toby, she asks him, “Why haven’t you been in touch?” And he responds, seemingly to a different question: “We would fight in public. It was too embarrassing. She just didn’t care who she started in front of.” Wait, was he even listening? And had he ever been? By the time Libby realizes that Toby’s clear and present needs had always been the throughline of their friendship — “I’m a real person with a soul and I could use a friend, too,” she says to a dating app-immersed Toby — it’s too late in their friendship to shake up the dynamic. “What possible need could you have?” he asks back.

So Libby tells her own story. As does Brodesser-Akner: While the author herself is happily married — even as, she’s joked, saying so indicates the opposite — she’s revealed that her parents’ divorce left her obsessed with the topic and in need of a way to delve in. Hence, the novel. Other details in the book are ripped straight from Brodesser-Akner’s own life (if you’re a fan, as I am, you’ve seen them pop up in personal essays), helping underscore the way being a woman can feel like the rawest of deals. By the time Karen Cooper, Toby’s patient, is diagnosed with Wilson’s disease, a rare liver affliction, she’d had her symptoms dismissed by an internist as depression, and sent away with a prescription for Zoloft. Brodesser-Akner has written of this very thing happening to her, of being repeatedly told her exhaustion was depression, until her doctor “begrudgingly” did bloodwork and discovered she had mono. She knows plenty of other women, she’s written, “who’ve been dismissed by their doctors for being lazy and careless and . . . downright crazy.” For Karen, whose disease could have been easily diagnosed from the early onset symptom of copper-colored rings around her irises, Brodesser-Akner told a book tour crowd in D.C., “I liked the idea — it’s kind of a hint — that if anybody had been looking her in the eye, they would have known about this long before it ever happened.” How invisible can a person be?

In the last act, the novel finally shifts to Rachel’s story. In a twist that’s delighted readers, Libby runs into Rachel — who appears to have been willfully neglecting her kids, thus validating Toby’s every condemnation of her — only to discover she’s had a nervous breakdown. By this point, the female characters have learned that being a woman can feel like an affront — even for Toby and Rachel’s 11-year-old daughter, Hannah, who gets kicked out of camp for texting a racy photo to a boy, who then sent it to everyone he knew. Yet Rachel’s story feels singularly harrowing. Some combination of her brutal childhood and brutal experience of childbirth and her manic efforts to overcome both, finally broke her; and she’s lost weeks of sleep and all sense of time, and is roaming the city sporting sweatpants, eye bags, a chop-job pixie cut she doesn’t remember getting, and a stark swipe of red lipstick, the armor she’s worn since college.

Toby’s not a bad guy; and Brodesser-Akner never leads us there. But, she suggests, when you’re stuck, tightfisted, inside your own story — unable to imagine that how you experience others is really how you experience yourself — the most unknowable person may be you, after all. “The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway,” Roth wrote. “Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that — well, lucky you.”

Rachel Rosenblit is a freelance writer and editor in New York.

[moosishun]

Here is another comment that was worth reading:

This book was worthwhile for the dating app experiences of Toby alone.

The twist ending was lovely and well-deserved. It was clear throughout the book, despite the fun he kind of had being free to date, and despite his wife having been an absolute pill, he wanted his marriage intact. I found it life-affirming. Really, the entire point of the book is you can look back and say "what if" and look forward and say "what if" but sometimes what you have is worth fighting for.

[moosishun]

This was another interesting comment (there were a fair number of people commenting who hated the book):

Man, some tough critics out there. Where I was able to come in the door on the beauty of this novel was the long dissection of the various perceptions that the characters had of themselves. By that I mean I'm divorced and I always thought the dissolution of the marriage was tilted more towards the faults of my spouse. I knew I had my shortcomings but the things I had to put up with I said to myself, it's no wonder it fell apart. The novel really made me reexamine all my righteous indignities and realize that so many of my bruised feelings probably could just as easily been laid at my doorstep. All this introspective examination was so dense the first time around I feel like I need to re-read the novel to fully digest all the points that were made. Bottom line is we're all so imperfect so how do we hold on to the reasons that bring us together in marriage or as partners as we have to mix in the personal growth and external factors that are part of life.
 

[wonderturtle]

I think I probably need to reread the novel as well, because some of the points brought up here went entirely over my head. I found myself skimming many (all) of Toby’s dating escapades. They just didn’t ring true to me, and I think by skimming that much I missed some great swaths of the book.

Also, I was disinclined to like pretty much any of the adults in this book, because of everyone I get like the kids were just mistreated, and not much gets under my skin like the mistreatment of kids.

[moosishun]

I'm personally coming back to yesterday's question in a bit because I have more thoughts!

However, today, I am going to wrap my question around libby being the narrator of this book - she is the first person. I was knocked off my feed when I realized somebody was relating this to us and it was HER, of all people.

Why do you think the author decided to do this? Were you surprised (Of Course You Were) - did this intrigue you or irritate you? Do you think of this person as first person, narrator or journalist and why? Why Libby? Would you have liked somebody else to have been the point of view?

What does this say about Point of View?