Review: Fleishman is in Trouble
/
3 stars. Brisk, funny, painful. My reaction to this book - about a man attempting to navigate sex and dating and parenting post-divorce - is so weird and I'm sure that's because I'm super distracted by a fucking. global. pandemic. and can't be invested in reading about insufferable hypocrites. But let's try to break it down:
Taffy's goals here - to spit on the rich, to put a harsh spotlight on the incredible male ego, to explore a dysfunctional marriage, to let women be complicated - are obvious. Admirable goals, to be sure, and I think she achieves them. But she telegraphs these themes so early that perhaps they're too obvious - I think I prefer a little more wrapping paper around my gifts. I already know the rich are horrible and I already know men are assholes and I already know that we as a species are spectacularly horrible at choosing and keeping mates and I already know that women are fucking spectacular multifaceted creatures who are punished for literally everything they do.
So maybe ... it needed a bit more editing and a bit more color and fewer dense sentences and a more balanced narrative. Maybe the repetition was too heavy. Maybe the perspective shift shouldn't have felt so jarring despite a lot of foreshadowing. Maybe the sex parts could've felt a little less like a woman-writing-a-man. Maybe it needed to feel crisper and less soggy. Maybe the narrator could've fit more neatly into the story.
It doesn't change the fact that her goals ARE admirable and this stuff SHOULD be written about and these stories SHOULD be read widely. And that ending - oh my god what a gut punch. We NEED more quotes like this:
"If you are a smart woman, you cannot stand by and remain sane once you fully understand, as a smart person does, the constraints of this world on a woman."
And this:
"So I would go home and would wedge myself back into my life. I would wonder, globally, how you could be so desperately unhappy when you are so essentially happy."
And this:
"Whatever kind of woman you are, even when you’re a lot of kinds of women, you’re still always just a woman, which is to say you’re always a little bit less than a man."
MORE OF THIS. More of this conflict. More of this push and pull. More of these pithy validating observations that make me breathless and seen and hopeless and grateful.
So yes, it hit me weird. But I recommend it. And I will read what she writes next.