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Fleishman Is in Trouble

On sale

18th June 2019

Price: £9.99

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Selected: ebook / ISBN-13: 9781472267085

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Sharp and wicked, insightful and funny, and then suddenly so touching’ DAVID NICHOLLS

‘It is a Great Novel . . . It has depth, wit, nuance and life. Heartbreaking and funny’ NIGELLA LAWSON

This is the novel of the summer . . . There is no one that this book isn’t for. I can’t believe it’s a first novel. Pure brilliance’ INDIA KNIGHT, THE SUNDAY TIMES

‘Could be one of the books of my entire lifetime. I’ve never felt so seen’ GRACE DENT, GUARDIAN

‘This book is a work of utter perfection’ ELIZABETH GILBERT


THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, JUNE 2019

Finally free from his nightmare marriage, Toby Fleishman is ready for a life of online dating and weekend-only parental duties. But as he optimistically looks to a future that is wildly different from the one he imagined, his life turns upside-down as his ex-wife, Rachel, suddenly disappears.

While Toby tries to find out what happened – juggling work, kids and his new, app-assisted sexual popularity – his tidy narrative of a spurned husband is his sole consolation. But if he ever wants to really understand where Rachel went and what really happened to his marriage, he is going to have to consider that he might not have seen it all that clearly in the first place . . .

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE:

‘So sharp’ GUARDIAN

‘The most astonishingly brilliant Trojan horse of a novel’ DOLLY ALDERTON

‘Wonderful. Utterly blistering . . . A wildly entertaining, moving story’ MARIAN KEYES

‘Brimming with wisdom and utterly of this moment . . . Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut is that rare and delicious treat: a page turner with heft’ MARIA SEMPLE

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL
SHORTLISTED FOR THE FICTION: DÉBUT BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS
RUNNER-UP FOR THE MCKITTERICK PRIZE 2020
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE/JOHN LEONARD AWARD FOR BEST FIRST BOOK

Reviews

Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette
From its opening pages, Fleishman is in Trouble is shrewdly observed, brimming with wisdom and utterly of this moment. Not until its explosive final pages are you fully aware of its cunning ferocity. Taffy Brodesser-Akner's debut is that rare and delicious treat: a page turner with heft
Tom Perrotta, Little Children
A marvel, full of shrewd observations, barbed wit, and deep insight. Taffy Brodesser-Akner reveals the twisted hearts of her characters - and the twisted soul of contemporary America - with an eye that is at once pitiless and full of compassion for our human foibles. This is a remarkable debut novel from one of the most distinctive writers around
Emma Straub, The Vacationers
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
Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest
Blisteringly funny, feverishly smart, heart-breaking and true. Fleishman Is In Trouble is an essential read for anyone who's wondered how to navigate loving (and hating) the people we choose
Laura Lippman, Sunburn
You're going to want to read this one: Fleishman in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner . . . It's about everything - love, friendship, life, death. Or, to borrow what we will now call the Tayari Jones standard, a literary novel with a great plot
Kirkus (Starred Review)
Firing on all circuits, from psychological insight to cultural acuity to narrative strategy to very smart humor. Quite a debut!
Nigella Lawson
I have just finished Fleishman Is in Trouble... and feel bereft. I read it too fast, because I couldn't stop, but can't bear that it's ended. It is a Great Novel (yes: cap G; Cap N). It has depth, wit, nuance and life. Heartbreaking and funny
Josh Glancy, The Sunday Times Magazine
Excellent first novel by the New York Times super-interviewer
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
Here is a portrait of modern love and marriage that is blisteringly funny, wincingly painful, and - ultimately - both heartbreaking and humane. Fleishman Is in Trouble reminds me of the great novels of the 1960s and 1970s - 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). Taffy Brodesser-Akner can write the pants off any novelist out there. She's a star, and this book is a work of utter perfection
Dolly Alderton, author of Everything I Know About Love
This book . . . is the most astonishingly brilliant Trojan horse of a novel. Begins as a hilarious, fast-paced tale of a middle-aged Manhattan man navigating fast sex culture of dating apps, ends as a gut-punch feminist text
Pandora Sykes
Fans of Taffy Brodesser-Akner's whipsmart profiles will not be disappointed by her debut novel. Extending the same heady cocktail of forensic observation, sardonic wit and cynicism mixed with zeitgeist, Brodesser Akner writes a novel for our times: what makes a marriage? A parent? A man? And when does it all end?
Marian Keyes, author of The Break
Wonderful. Utterly blistering about how women have to live - a powerful feminist book wrapped with perfect stealth in a wildly entertaining, moving story
Kristin Iversen, Nylon
It's biting and bracing, and - like the best beach reads - offers unflinching insight into the unexplored depths of the human condition.
Porter
Her debut novel takes her uncanny knack for articulating the human condition with incisive tenderness to new heights; Fleishman is in Trouble is a wisdom-packed story about modern relationships
Francesca Brown, Stylist
Chock full with humour and originality . . . It's a grown-up comedy that actually has far deeper things to say about love
Red Online, Sarra Manning
Smart and sassy but also dark and scabrous, fans of Maria Semple will love Fleishman Is in Trouble too.
David Nicholls, author of One Day
Sharp and wicked, insightful and funny, and then suddenly so touching
Emma Brockes, Guardian
A funny critique of the intoxicating life of the recently separated... Everyone is disastrous and everyone is human, and the writing is so sharp that one finishes the novel somehow feeling warm towards them all
Olivia Petter, Independent
A shrewd meditation on marriage and middle age... A twisty, sophisticated narrative filled with humour and pathos
Olivia Ovenden, Esquire UK
Deftly done
Clara Strunck, Evening Standard Magazine
You don't get advance praise from Elizabeth Gilbert . . . for nothing. This New York Times writer's satirical novel about marriage and relationships in 2019 is dazzlingly clever
Sarah Hughes, iNews
Funny, acutely observed and certain to be on every sun lounger this summer
Francesca Carington, Tatler
[A] funny, searing debut . . . Shrewd and satirical, but balanced with sympathy, it's an impressive first novel from the New York Times Magazine writer
Ron Charles, Washington Post
Believe the hype. Fleishman Is in Trouble is even better than we were promised . . . A feminist jeremiad nested inside a brilliant comic novel - a book that makes you laugh so hard you don't notice till later that your eyebrows have been singed off
Tom Rachman, The New York Times
Witty and well-observed . . . Brodesser-Akner has written a potent, upsetting and satisfying novel
Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone
Enthralling . . . [Brodesser-Akner] writes with the heft and masterful wordplay of a [Tom] Wolfe, but with empathy for and curiosity about all the players in the tale. It's a cutting sociological dissection of the way we live now, but it cares about its characters as people . . . Fleishman Is in Trouble will occasionally make you angry at the things the people in it do, but mostly it will make you hungry for whatever Brodesser-Akner is going to write next
Claire Fallon, Huffington Post
[Brodesser-Akner's] prose is seamless, her asides clever, her observations always on point. Without flattening her subjects, she locates the stakes of their quotidian dramas and the hidden tensions of their seemingly controlled lives, transforming something unremarkable into something textured, absorbing, and darkly funny. When she writes a book about modern heterosexual marriage, you don't roll your eyes; you clear your schedule
Elena Nicolaou, Refinery29
Taffy Brodesser-Akner dissects a marriage - and in doing so, interrogates the entire institution. She creates a page-turner as insightful as it is impossible to put down
Keely Weiss, Harpers Bazaar
In her debut novel, Brodesser-Akner does the seemingly impossible, imbuing the classic tale of middle-aged male ennui with a sense of empathy for women
Hillary Kelly, Vogue
Brodesser-Akner is a master of zeitgeisty pith
Allison McNearney, The Daily Beast
Fleishman Is in Trouble offers a fresh take on modern relationships and mid-life reckonings in a story that complicates the roles of gender, social status, and ambition, with a delightfully comical exploration of emoji culture to boot
Mail Online
Toby Fleishman isn't the only one in trouble. Infusing candor, humor and social commentary, this book holds up a mirror to all of us, demanding that we take a hard look at how we live and how we love
Katy Guest, Guardian
Fleishman Is in Trouble is so much smarter than a Great American Novel wannabe written by another clever man . . . What Brodesser-Akner has achieved here, by Trojan-horsing herself into Toby's point of view, is to quietly reveal the souls of the women in the story. But more than that, to show that all stories - about marriage, love, loss, hope and disappointment - really are universal. Libby believes that "all humans are essentially the same, but only some of us, the men, were truly allowed to be that without apology". This is an honest, powerful, human story with no apologies. And it will do the "American Novel" a power of good.
India Knight, The Sunday Times
This is the novel of the summer . . . It is incredibly wise. There is no one that this book isn't for. I can't believe it's a first novel. Pure brilliance
Phoebe Luckhurst, Evening Standard
Debuts like this don't come along very often
Siobhan Murphy, The Times
A funny, dazzlingly written, delicious subversion of the marriage novel . . . It's wry, deeply felt and moving - it's definitely the book you should read this summer
Tracey Thorn, author of Another Planet
Just finished reading Fleishman is in Trouble and it is brilliant. Insights into middle age and marriage that will make you sit up straight in your chair, if you happen to be middle aged, and married.
Rhik Samadder, author of I Never Said I Loved You
This dazzling switchblade of a first novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner is smart and sexy and pitiless and humane. I think human beings must be cellophane to her. Thoroughly recommended
Wendy Holden, Daily Mail
Wonderfully, perceptively written . . . What I really loved was the savage social satire. Class division and wealthy one-upmanship, holiday homes, spin classes, mega-apartments, posh schools; it's all here.
Richard Godwin, The Times
Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Fleishman is in Trouble is a clever novel that upends the sexist clichés of the Great American Novel as written by Philip Roth and John Updike
Phoebe Luckhurst, Evening Standard
Every summer produces a status read, though it is a bonus when it's one that's also a must-read. This year's hot tome is Fleishman Is In Trouble, a novel by American journalist Taffy Brodesser-Akner that is both a comedy of Manhattan manners and a very modern battle of the sexes, exploring a clash of female rage and male inadequacy
Nina Stibbe, author of Reasons to be Cheerful
Stylish, smart, surprising. I loved it
David Baddiel
A great book. Really funny and really right about the deepest human stuff. All hail Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Sarah Gilmartin, The Irish Times
Delving deep into the gender inequalities of sex, marriage, divorce and online dating in modern-day New York, it is a book teeming with insights and humour, a genuine tour de force
Alan Johnson, New Statesman
There may be readers who opened Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner hoping to be shocked by all the heavily reported sex and profanity. Indeed, the opening chapter suggests that the book is just about a newly separated middle-aged man, who, after years of monogamy, is bemused and confounded by the brutally sexualised business of online dating. It's a captivating start but the book is much more profound than that. Brodesser-Akner, in her debut novel, captures the essence of modern, middle-class New York mores brilliantly
Grace Dent, Guardian
Could be one of the books of my entire lifetime. I've never felt so seen . . . A coruscating, dizzying, razor-sharp attack on modern marriage, fatherhood, Tinder sex, social hierarchical woes and midlife unravelling.
Scarlett Curtis
I do think this book changed my life! . . . It's hilarious, fascinating, painfully observant. I have recommended it to every single person I know
Sunday Express
This first novel by one of America's sharpest journalists is the story of hapless Jewish doctor Toby Fleishman, raising his two children alone and discovering the joys of casual sex after being abandoned by his wife. Although at first we see the world through Toby's eyes, contradictory voices gradually begin to emerge in this cunningly constructed and acidly funny debut.
Hadley Freeman
So urgently modern and relevant . . . I kept turning down pages