Skip to main content

Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner review – smart, funny story of love and sex

A New York journalist’s debut recalls Franzen or Roth – but is much more than just another wannabe Great American Novel

Fleishman Is in Trouble is a remarkable work of ventriloquism from the New York Times Magazine journalist best known for her revealing profile interviews with the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Jonathan Franzen. Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut is ostensibly the story of Toby Fleishman, a 41-year-old hepatologist whose estranged wife Rachel drops off their kids at 4am one night and then, with a casual text message, disappears out of their lives. Toby is an angry man – and understandably bitter about Rachel’s self-centred hostility – but somewhat cheered that, since he was last single, there is suddenly internet dating. All of New York is “now crawling with women who wanted him … Women who would fuck you like they owed you money.” It is a promising start, especially for fans of Franzen or Philip Roth, or the type of contemporary writer who can often be found on the shortlist for the Bad Sex in Fiction award. But 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 is to quietly reveal the souls of the women in the story

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2FITd9M
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One giant leap: meet the new generation of male ballet stars

Beauty, strength and bags of energy: BBC Four’s Men at the Barre documentary gets up close and personal with the Royal Ballet dancers on the rise ‘It’s a golden era of male ballet dancers.” So says Emma Cahusac, the commissioning editor behind a new documentary, Men at the Barre, part of BBC Four’s dance season. It’s not just hyperbole. The young men rising up at the Royal Ballet are some of the most exciting in dance right now: principals Matthew Ball and Marcelino Sambé, first soloists Cesar Corrales and William Bracewell, and first artist Joseph Sissens all feature in Men at the Barre. With the majority of them British or UK-trained, it’s a giant leap from the grumblings of a decade ago about the lack of local dancers making it to the top. I spoke to Ball, Corrales and Sambé by phone, all staying resolutely positive during this enforced break from their intensive dancing lives, but all desperate to get back to work with colleagues they’re certain are something special. “I see so m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dita Von Teese: ‘Even when I was a bondage model, I had big-time boundaries’

As the star dives into a giant glass of fizz for her first online extravaganza, she talks about this new golden age for burlesque, why the French Strictly gives her costume problems – and how #MeToo has changed her Dita Von Teese is looking divine. Her lips are that signature red, she’s wearing 1950s cat eye glasses, and her black hair falls in a thick wave across a Snow White skin – and all this on the unglamorous stage of a glitchy Zoom call. Only knowing Von Teese from her femme fatale image, her teasingly aloof burlesque performances, and her time in the tabloids as former wife of goth rocker Marilyn Manson , you might expect an icy demeanour, an impermeable mystique. So it’s surprising to discover quite how normal she is: chatty, self-deprecating, not very vampish. It’s easy to see traces of Heather Sweet, the “super shy” girl from small-town Michigan who transformed into Von Teese. The reason for our conversation is a new film, Night of the Teese, made with director Quinn Wils...
Post a Comment
Read more