Taffy Brodesser-Akner's popular new novel Fleishman is in Trouble has been splendidly reviewed across the internet, so I will be brief. The book begins as a compelling divorce tale, told by a third party-- Libby, the ex-magazine writer.
If you continue there will be spoilers, as the book has a mystery element to it.
Libby is Toby's old friend, and she sympathetic to his plight. We learn that Toby is taking care of his two kids, saving lives as a hepatologist, navigating the on-line dating scene, and wondering where the hell his uber-successful agent wife has gotten to. He adopts a puppy. He's a divorced, horny Mr. Mom, who also has a difficult job. Despite his flaws, we are on his side. His wife is absent and cold and callous and overly ambitious.
But it seems that Libby (and the reader) has been taken in with Toby's story. While Toby's not in any way malevolent, his perspective might be limited. And stupidly masculine. Perhaps this is because he's quite short. It's not until Libby runs into Toby's wife Rachel that the story gets more fleshed out. Things are not exactly as they seem. But the story doesn't get fully fleshed out, because perhaps a third party can never understand a marriage from the outside.
So the paradox that Brodesser-Akner-Akner writes about is that it takes an outside view to describe a marriage, to get both perspectives, but it's like Nagel's essay about the mind of a bat-- you have to be inside a marriage to truly understand it. It's hard enough to unravel the motivations, voice, and point-of-view of one person, but once you bind their life inextricably to another, then both of their perspectives and characters are so intertwined, but also striving for autonomy, and there's no seeing it all at once.
While this sounds like serious stuff, the book is also satirical and funny and rambles through a wild world of NYC entitlement and wealth. Definitely worth reading.
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