Fleishman Is in Trouble

“Toby and Rachel had separated at the very beginning of June, just after school ended, the culmination of an almost yearlong process, or maybe a process that began shortly after their wedding 14 years before.” 

The timeline of Toby and Rachel’s divorce doesn’t exist on a clean, clear continuum, but like everything else, is subject to interpretation, and therefore to confusion and misunderstanding. 

“This gave him peace and hope, that anything he’d missed out on when he married Rachel so young was still there, waiting. That other people had screwed up and were starting over, too.” 

One of the central themes of the novel—and one of its more hopeful notes—involves this idea that there is still plenty of life awaiting Toby and Rachel, despite the disappointment and pain of the marriage’s collapse.

“There were no dad’s nights out for my husband, because the supposition was that the men got to live life all the time, whereas we were caged animals who were sometimes allowed to prowl our local town bar and drink the blood of the free people.”

The narrator is not only witty but also pointed and poignant in her observations about gender. This passage amply demonstrates all these qualities at once. 

“But the liver was unique in the way that it healed. It was full of forgiveness. It understood that you needed a few chances before you got your life right. And it wouldn’t just forgive you; it would practically forget.”

The liver’s forbearance is a metaphor for tolerance in relationships. The image is striking because of just how far from such an ideal Toby is for most of the novel. He catalogues his wife’s wrongdoings and constantly adds them to her ledger.

“May you never marry. May your hair fall out before you find a woman able to tolerate your snoring and your farting. May your true self always be a lie.”

While Seth, the narrator, and Toby are abroad in Israel, they encounter a woman on the street who deals each of them curses. Throughout the novel, the friends continue to issue curses to people as an inside joke.

“‘Why like jazz?’ Seth asked. ‘Because that’s what you do,’ Toby said. ‘Nobody does that,’ Seth said. ‘People who say they like jazz are lying.’” 

This line is a good representation of Seth’s style of humor. He is often rude, playful, and quick witted. 

“Who really knew why Seth was perennially, diagnostically, terminally afraid to marry?”

Each of the three friends has their own relationship to intimacy. Whereas the narrator and Toby have committed to marriages in their lives, Seth plays the role of the freewheeling, noncommittal bachelor. 

“Even during their worst times, he and Rachel fucked all the time, three times a week at the very least.” 

The narrator makes free use of expletives throughout the novel and does not shy away from talking about sex in explicit detail, as this line illustrates. 

“He tried to approach her, but she was vicious and snarling and her nostrils were flaring. She was beautiful like her mother and she was ridiculous like her mother.”

Hannah chafes at Toby’s parenting much as Rachel chafes at Toby’s anger and impatience. Hannah’s similarity to Rachel likely contributes to tensions with her father.

“It was all such an insult, the Hamptons.” 

As Toby drives to the house in the Hamptons that he and Rachel share, he reflects on how differently he and Rachel see such wealth. While Rachel aspires to it, Toby despises it.

“It’s the head of a big division, Toby. You’d be bringing in a mil before bonuses. You’d manage an entire team. Great hours. The works.”

A job offer from Sam tests Toby’s integrity. In the end, despite all his faults, Toby says no to such a deal. He chooses to continue on in his career as a healer, rather than taking a route to riches that would go against his own beliefs.

“In his experience, which, yes, was brief, okay, but still, the sexier and steamier it got via text message and app, the less likely an actual in-person encounter would be.”

The narrator returns again and again to the sexual content of the messages that women send Toby. Though he goes on many live meetups, much of his dating life takes place merely on his phone. 

“‘You have to ride this mentorship to the sky,’ she would say, which was the kind of imbecile power-talk they used in the mailroom at Alfooz and Lichtenstein.” 

This line well illustrates the sort of professional attitude Rachel has, as well as the way Toby speaks of Rachel’s ambition in a condescending way. 

“WHAT IS HE DOING? HE’S NOT EXAMINING ME. HE’S DOING SOMETHING!!”

One of the most dramatic and traumatic moments of the novel is when a doctor reaches into Rachel during Hannah’s birth. She expresses pain, confusion, fear, and sense of violation as it is happening. The experience haunts her and affects her long afterward, contributing to the distance in her relationship with Hannah.

“Every family was just like mine: chubby, domineering mother; clueless, servile dad; disgusted child; happy-go-lucky child who just wants to know if the slide is open; sometimes there was a third child if the chubby, domineering mother and the clueless, servile dad had started early enough.” 

The narrator here trains her pointed wit on her own family, stating how alike everyone in the New Jersey suburbs seems to be.

“He felt weak picturing the Breck commercial-ization of his daughter’s nipple. He couldn’t get the image of her face out of his head, the priapic glare, the amateur lust. Did she even know what this meant?”

Toby is forced to grapple with some uncomfortable thoughts after Hannah is caught sending explicit photos to another boy at summer camp, particularly since Hannah physically resembles Rachel.

“‘It’s because she hates you,’ Hannah said. ‘She can’t stand being near you.’” 

After Toby finally tells his children that their mother is missing, Hannah lashes out with her own—possibly true—appraisal. Toby is relieved to take Hannah’s mind off of what has just happened to her at summer camp. 

“Toby sat, stunned, and realizing that his entire problem in life was that he could still be stunned by information that revealed what seemed to be true most of the time, which was that things weren’t what they seemed.”

Toward the end of the novel, Toby begins to see the ways he’s deceived himself by preferring what he assumes to be true about people over what’s real about them.

“Maybe Toby was for me. I leaned forward to kiss him. He pushed me away.” 

After both hinting at and denying the possibility of a romantic interest in Toby, the narrator ultimately makes a move on him. This episode increases the dramatic stakes when she runs into Rachel the next morning. 

“He suddenly felt cold. He heard Bartuck’s words, but not in order. ‘Someone job for hired else we the.’” 

The narrator’s playfulness and inventiveness with words continues even in important moments, such as when Toby learns he hasn’t gotten the promotion he expected. 

“But by the end of Hannah’s first year of school, Rachel would honestly say that her greatest achievement in life was getting Miriam Rothberg interested enough in Pilates to try it out with her at the studio near Rachel’s office, and committing to weekly class.” 

Rachel believes that her and her family’s success requires them to be connected to the correct people. 

“It was official. She was unacceptable; an illegitimate kind of person. Her success made her poison.”

During Rachel’s breakdown at the novel’s end, she repeatedly thinks of herself as unacceptable, internalizing a message sent to ambitious women by society at large. 

“I saw the girl in the couple, who couldn’t have been more than 24, and I knew now that in a few years, that girl would be just some guy’s wife.” 

Though the narrator comes across as cynical about marriage in this line, she ultimately affirms her role in her own marriage by the novel’s end.