Fleishman Is In Trouble

Why books great 'til they gotta be great?

I'm exaggerating.

Kind of.

But, this book held so much promise for me. I liked so much of it. But, I feel like it fell apart in the final 30%. Like Peter Griffin on Family Guy once said about The Godfather, "It insists upon itself."

That's how this book ended for me. Like, it made its point (which was a good point, actually), then it just refused to end. That's what's left a bad taste in my mouth.

Let me back up.

This book took off like a rocket to me. Toby Fleishman is a soon-to-be-divorced fortysomething dad who is experiencing single life for the first time after a long and, to hear him tell it, tortured marriage. He's finding out through dating apps that there's a world of adult sexual experience to be explored and he's living his life to the absolute fullest in that regard. We also learn about his wife who is more obsessed with her career than she is with being a mom. One day, she drops the kids off early for their weekend with dad and vanishes. Drops off the face of the earth. No texts, no calls, no updates. In the weeks (and chapters) that follow, we wonder along with Toby how a mother could simply abandon her children. How could she be so selfish?

You see where this is going, right? It doesn't take a soothsayer to know that you're going to find out where Rachel really is and that maybe Toby's opinion isn't exactly spot on after all.

The book is narrated by Toby's college friend who is living her own version of a tortured marriage existence. Through her and every other central character in this book, the message of this book is crystal clear: in marriage, we're all wrong and we're all right and we rarely see it through other people's eyes. And, we're all longing for the past and future simultaneously without ever really appreciating the present.

See, there's a lot about this book that resonates. The idea that every day, we're getting older. We're constantly trying to hang onto something that's past. As parents and spouses, it's incredibly easy to forget who we are; when we try to remind ourselves, our motives are dismissed as selfish and immature.

The book did an incredible job capturing that feeling. It also did a great job exploring how we never really know anyone, even someone we've shared our bed with for more than a decade. And, it made the point about the expectations society has for women. We're either moms or sexual beings, but not both. We're either moms or ambitious about our career, but not both. The points are clear and relevant. But, at the end, it really belabored that point. It's also a theme that appears more and more in books I've read. The author here didn't do much to tell it in a different way. By the end, I felt like shouting "WE GOT IT!" and it still went on for 40 pages or so after that.

About 80% of the way through, there's a metaphor about watching a show that doesn't get good until the third season. It's about how we endure just because we're expecting some payoff and about the time we waste waiting for something to "get good." It was an apt metaphor given my thoughts on this book overall.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is, I almost loved this book. Maybe 70 fewer pages could have done the trick.