Rachel Fleishman has a history of not coming home on time: she's a wildly successful Manhattan talent scout who works ridiculous hours, some of them arguably necessary. But when she doesn't come back from a yoga retreat and won't return her husband's calls, he gets mad. Not only must Toby juggle his work obligations with taking care of their two kids, he has to convince them that their mother's extended absence is job-related.
Rachel and Toby, a doctor who keeps bankers' hours, have been separated for about a month, which was his idea. Until now, the separation has been working well for Toby, both sexually (he's a hit on dating apps, plus he and Rachel are still sleeping together) and in terms of pride (he felt that Rachel looked down on him for his relatively modest salary; she didn't understand that "he was never really meant to be a rich person in the first place"). Just when the reader is squarely on Team Toby comes this howlingly funny debut novel's third act, which works a certain miracle: it makes Rachel sympathetic.
As marriage-in-crisis novels go, Fleishman Is in Trouble belongs alongside work by Bellow, Roth and Updike, but Taffy Brodesser-Akner overlays her wickedly well-observed consideration of modern coupledom with something that those guys never claimed to have: a feminist sensibility. As Rachel notes about her wealthy friend, "Her money allowed her to have a feminist streak despite having never experienced the pitfalls of the male-dominated world the way it existed." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer