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Fleishman Is in Trouble
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I got through 200 pages before DNF. I was really annoyed at Rachel for dumping off her kids and disappearing. I was annoyed at Toby for his dating apps and for his generally pathetic demeanor, and basically everything that wasn't parenting (the parts I read, he did at least seem like he was doing that as best he could). I was annoyed at them both for talking at each other but not actually understanding each others' points of view or making an effort to try, and I was especially annoyed at Rachel for thinking Toby's quarter million dollars a year salary is disappointing. Boo freaking hoo. (I think I've read enough rich-white-people-in-NYC narratives that it's not interesting to me anymore, because it's hard to feel empathy for anyone when they have everything and it's Not Enough.)But I'm curious for other thoughts. This had so many rave reviews but I just didn't get it.
Bonnie G. wrote: "We are coming up on February, and its Fleishman time! I love this book. LOVED it, but as always there are many opinions, and I am looking forward to everyone's thoughts. The characters in this bo..."
I've never read any Philip Roth, but I had to assume, based on this book, I wouldn't like him much.
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The cha..."
Haha, likely very true. He is my favorite 20th century author I think. There are some other close calls, but I think for the entire body of work, he takes it.
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I want to raise one thing -- they don't have everything, not even close. That is something people often miss -- not being poor is essential to happiness, but having serious money just changes the problems, it doesn't erase them. I think its fair to say, without outing particular friends, that my friends who feel the most anxiety and fear are my friends with real money. Toby and Rachel have money, some (though a million a year is not going to pay for the life described) but having money comes with enormous social pressures that make you need to have more. It is impossible to keep pace with people who have endless family money,and its hard to feel like you are giving your children what they need when everyone around you is telling you they must learn to ski in Aspen, to dive in the Maldives, and to attend Collegiate or Brearly. And then there is the next level, when you amass enough money to give your family those things, to appear the "right" way walking down the street, many doors are still closed unless you get the go-ahead from the people around you. You are being judged constantly. The other night someone took me to a private restaurant (yes, NYC has private restaurants with NDAs for guests and $100k initiation fees.) Everyone was surreptitiously watching everyone else. It was unsettling even for me, and I don't give a damn what any of those people other than the friend who took me think of me.) When you are living in that world your point of reference shifts and your entire life becomes rapped up in false idols. And for someone like Rachel who lived a life of total deprivation, material and emotional, the desire to find acceptance in this rarefied crowd is likely to be strong.
I did not even make it 50 pages in before I figured out this book was not for me. The story was not interesting to me and the characters were not appealing. So many books to read, so little time, so this one went in the DNF pile.
Well, both my mother and my father have left me in a conference room for a full work day. I'm an old, though, this happened before the current generation's style of competitive mothering.I didn't think this book was about money at all, though, other than it being important to Toby and Rachel to have it. I thought this book was a wake-up call to all of us conditioned to be riveted to a moneyed white man's suffering. We listen to a LOT of Toby's narcissistic bullshit and most of us stick it out because we need the question of what happened to Rachel answered. But would we have listened to the story having been started from Rachel's point of view? Toby is an absolute nightmare, but he's entertaining, from an outsider's perspective. Reminds me a ton of my most recent ex, actually.
When Rachel reappears, I was floored with guilt, both because I'd been caught up in the manchild's petty dramas, and because it occurred to me that Taffy probably had to write the book this way, because reading about a moneyed overachieving white woman's breakdown isn't where the entertainment value is. And other than wondering where TF Rachel was during all of this, I didn't question that perspective in the least. It seemed normal, to me. And I am hoping that was her point. Since reading it, I find myself trying to examine the voice of every story, and deciding which stories, fictional or non, have been presented to me in in the human way, or in the entertaining way. Most of what we consume is the latter, and I hope that begins to change. I hope it can change.
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I didn't..."
Great thoughts Laural. Especially the point that the book has to come from the man's perspective -- and I wish that moneyed white women's breakdowns did matter, because the causes of those breakdowns tell us a lot about what is wrong with popular conceptions of success. The white male equivalent, from Updike, to Roth, to Amis (the Younger and the Elder) enjoyed years at the top of the bestseller lists (not a complaint, i love all those writers) but the sources of modern affluent womens' discontent have not had their moment outside of niche feminist literature. Maybe people see Liane Moriarty and Gillian Flynn as telling those stories, but to me those books are whiny and inauthentic and in Moriarty's case wildly anti-feminist. This story felt real and unique for modern lit.
Relatedly, I think the money didn't matter, except that it gave shape to the theme that women striving for financial success are looked at as harridens, and I think that is an important point too rarely highlighted.
I like being entertained, so I am still drawn to fictional stories that do that, but I think that books like this make me consider the source more with nonfiction storytelling and that is a good thing.
I was wary about this book selection because of the summary, which seemed to promise more of the same entitled men with problems of their own making kind of thing with which I am Done. But the strength of reviews and faith of this group got me to try it, so thanks, team, because it surpassed my expectations and drew me in early on.I appreciated both sides of the Fleishmans' problems, and the inevitability of their self-destruction. I didn't think the observations about growing up, marriage being work, or double standards for women were anything novel, but they were well-told.
For me, the third-party story was the most interesting part. Our actual narrator straight up tells us that women's stories have to be told through men's to get noticed, and that she can write more vividly about other people than about herself. Then she lets us know how she's going to end the book in advance of that actual ending. How much of the Fleishmans are her invention? Did anything actually happen here? The craft elevated the book.
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Oh wow, i did not even think about the possibility that the Fleishmans were just an invention, a way to tell the story. That is really brilliant. I honestly did not catch that women's stories need to be told through men -- I think it is 100% right, I just missed the point entirely. I also liked the third party telling, but I saw it only as a way to get to a more honest story. (Toby was always frankly delusional and superficial -- people would never stop being catty about a woman who ate nothing but chicken breast and lettuce but for Toby its somehow okay.) Y'all made me see this so much differently - and now I like it even more.
Also, I agree that the observations about double standards are not new, but while they are oft written about in feminist essay form they are also rarely well spelled out in fiction.
Allie wrote: "I got through 200 pages before DNF. I was really annoyed at Rachel for dumping off her kids and disappearing. I was annoyed at Toby for his dating apps and for his generally pathetic demeanor, and ..."Can't agree more. I was SO disappointed in this book. The level of self absorption of every single was character was unbelievable
I can't tell you how disappointed I was in this book. Apart from all the rave reviews, I'd heard a chapter read by the author on a podcast and THAT sounded great.So I was really looking forward to reading the book. I'm in the UK so my commitment extended to even buying the hardback version - but despite all this goodwill and enthusiasm I lost patience about half way through. Big time. It was repetitive and so narrow in focus. Even the "twists" in the second half (it's really a woman writing as a man! ? Rachel turns up again!) had me rolling my eyes. Because I was feeling manipulated - and by immensely privileged, self absorbed people at that.
And even that central premise - a woman has to write as a man to be heard - is she serious??? Really? Because no one has ever read Erica Jong, or taken Sylvia Plath seriously? They were writing about breakdowns and the problems of being a woman in a man's world decades ago - and Virginia Woolf was being taken pretty seriously back in the last century.
Maybe if you want to sell kids' books to both genders like JK Rowling, you might not publish as a woman - but a book about marital and mental breakdown? Girls' stuff.
Sorry I'm sounding ranty here. The only Phillip Roth I've read was "The War Against America" and, I know it was untypical of the rest of his work, but that really is in a different ballpark to Brodesser Akner!
I'm going to admit that the book was a great read for the first third of it - and I did like Toby despite everything! At least he came out well compared to Rachel.
Was it just me, or did anyone else think that there were a lot of similarities between Toby's best friend Elizabeth and Rachel?
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I just finished this book and it will sit with me for a while. I'd really like my husband to read it and see what he thinks. To me, much of it was a novel about two parent who had differing "love languages" in the raising of their children. Toby was set up as more sympathetic because he was the one doing the things that mothers mostly do--he was the one who was present, ending his work days early so that he could pick up the children, cooking, nurturing, having that internal debate about when to give your child a cell phone, etc. And Rachel's love language was working to give them the kind of childhood she'd felt left out of, to give them a leg up in life...more than a leg up in life with money and connections. Her work was, for the most part, invisible. And neither of them had any respect for the other's expressions of love for their children. Did Rachel *have* to have a nervous breakdown for the reader to have sympathy for her? I don't know. I know I started empathizing with her when the dreadful Miriam said, "*All* mothers work." The Miriam with a Chief of Staff to direct all the household and parenting duties and staff. And I felt a kinship with Rachel describing her late nights looking for the "right" activities for her kids and trying to decide how many is too many and how many is too few.
I'm glad this book was selected for this group. I don't think I would have read it, left to my own devices.
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YES!
Okay, I had this conversation at book club the other week; I feel like a don't read critically AT ALL anymore. Unless it is egregious, I tend to like whatever it is that I am reading. Until I read all of your comments, I basically just thought, "Wow, Rachel needs some serious counseling and help with her coping mechanisms." I LIKED Toby. A lot! That I kept picturing him as Martin Freeman probably didn't help.
Perhaps because I am not a mother, I have missed the Competitive Mothering that exists today. I mean, it has probably always existed, but now, it's on FB and IG, and there's a more public facing image to keep up.
In any event, this was an extremely readable book. I couldn't wait to find out what happened to Rachel, and I felt sad for her - but mostly because I felt like her entire life motivation was to avoid the pain she had known as a child, and that was heartbreaking. At the same time, I feel like she was smart enough to KNOW that she needed to seek counseling, and didn't.
And what Lisa said about love languages is totally spot on. They truly didn't know how to respect each other when it came to how they showed and how they received love.
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I agree with so much of this, but I really question whether Toby really was doing very much. Every little thing a father does is magnified by others to the point one expects they will be nominated for sainthood. So Toby came home a little earlier, but there was a full time nanny who did a lot of the child-rearing. And we know that he worried about things like screen time, but we don't know Rachel did not. In fact, Toby mentions that she was in constant communication with the sitter, so she was likely getting reports on all of these things. Her standards might have been different, but I suspect she was parenting more actively than Toby lets the reader know (and in fact I suspect more than Toby realizes.)
I read this a few months ago and really liked it but don't remember it! I do remember how once the writer revealed that she was the character, I found it really interesting to see how the story was constructed and told
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Thanks Bonnie. I've been meaning to get back to Fleishman since listening to an interview with Brodesser Aker. I might have been too hard on it earlier
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Macy. let me know if your opinion changes on the revisit. Brodesser-Aker is delightful. I know I have mentioned this before, but her Goop profile is my all time favorite piece of celebrity journalism ever besides the Randy and Evi Quaid profile in Vanity Fair, which will always be number one. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/...
Bonnie, thanks for linking that. I have aways loved her profiles, and the Quaid one never gets old. My favorite 'wait, what?!' moment form this most recent read was where their claim that Mel Gibson was framed. And she doesn't do that lazy writer thing where she inserts herself into the story. Just the facts, just the direct quotes, and it's riveting. I first came to Fleishman because it was recommended by Kim France of Lucky/Sassy/Spin/Girls of a Certain Age. She recently recommended another one I enjoyed, periperhally about the fall of the magazine industry in New York, but mostly about three women navigating a long friendship: How Could She by Lauren Mechling. I found it similarly insightful.
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The characters in this book are so deeply flawed, but the reader still wants to know all about them. It is clear from the beginning that Toby is kind of a controlling self-involved little man with severe Napoleonic complex and its clear that he knows nothing about his ex-wife. Other than that nothing is clear. This book is about men and women and marriage and the lie of feminism and the fact that if you are a mother and have a career outside the home you are working twice as hard but the world makes you apologize because at least you have objective worth. It is about how we all compromise for men to have professional success, but we revile women who work hard - forget compromising we go the other way and vilify. Basic truth, women are penalized for doing things men do and are lauded for and men are celebrated for doing things people just expect as a baseline for women. I laughed at what a big deal is made becuae Toby picks his kids up from school. So ladies, can you imagine one of your kids' teachers getting all swoony because you picked up your damn offspring? It is appalling. Also, I loved that Toby just brought his kids to work and stashed them in the conference room for a full work day. Again, who does that? Not women, that is for sure. This is the thing that most holds back women. Women are exhausted and unhappy for a reason -- they are expected to be grateful and to fight for the right to hold 2-3 full time jobs simultaneously, and to be paid less for the honor.
The book is also about different kinds of love and different kinds of people and the assault of passivity. We stop working at love, stop thinking about what is expected. Unconditional love outside of parents and children is a ridiculous notion. Relationships take work, And people assume that if they don't say anything mean they are doing all they need to do to move relationships forward. (This applies outside of love relationships too. Certainly it is there in both marriages we see but also this is Toby at work. He allows things to happen to him, and then is pissed when he doesn't move up as a reward for taking no real initiative other than simply being good at his job. If he asked for things, if he defined his role, if he took things seriously things would happen, but he just shows up, does his job, and assumes people will celebrate him the same way they do for picking up is damn kids or being on a dating app and not being entirely gross.
This is about how money and the love of money change us, how it grows unchecked, even if we pretend we don't love the money. (Toby loves the trappings of money, he just likes to bitch.) This is about how Jersey is as good as New York (we will have to agree to disagree on that one point) and about how continuing to be married is a choice, a choice to remember why you are married especially in the moments the monotony and responsibility seems it will crush you. It is about life.
Brodesser-Akner is the 21st century version of Philip Roth, and this time the women get to tell the story. For me it was tied for best book of the 2019 (I read it in late December.) Tied with the Great Believers which was ridiculously great. In the immortal words of When Harry Met Sally "YES YES YES."
So everyone who loved Toby, tell me why?