Fleishman is in Trouble...

... is in trouble

My husband hates writing that starts with a politician-style “let me be clear” caveat, he thinks it is spineless and weak and is bad writing.

But I DO WANT TO BE CLEAR that I think that Fleishman is in Trouble, the novel, was a masterpiece. I kept putting it down and covering my face with my hands and doing quiet screams into them because I will never, not ever, write anything even 5% as good.

It also caused me another sort of quiet-scream pain, a sort of pain of recognition, at the shrewd observations the author makes about motherhood and family life and work and all that tremendous crap. I. Felt. Seen.

So I avoided Fleishman is in Trouble, the Disney TV series, for a while, which is why this is so late to the game. First because it was all just too much. Then Jesse Eisenberg and Claire Danes seemed very weird castings for Toby and Rachel. And second because I kept getting messages from people saying “Umm, can we talk about Fleishman is in Trouble?” That’s not a good sign.

Then I finally watched it and… it’s kind of a mess. Throughout it I thought, most powerfully, why do they have to turn everything into a TV series? Why can’t you just leave a book alone?

The novel itself was a feat of brilliant writing over a recognised novelistic structure. It felt like Brodesser-Akner just sat down and wrote it in one long stream of consciousness, without ever having read Into The Woods or On Writers and Writing or taken a single creative writing class. And thank god for that: the dead hand of creative writing courses has its clammy hands all over new fiction, it’s stunning and daring and exhilarating to read something free from it.

But why did it have to be a TV show? After all, nothing really happens in the book. Not really. And just because you are a brilliant, innovative novelist who needs literally zero help writing a knock-out bestseller, it doesn’t mean you can write TV. And it’s kind of extraordinary how one stellar success can mean a writer is suddenly surrounded by those who won’t tell them that something isn’t working. And sometimes I wonder if it’s not that they’re scared to say it’s not working, it’s that they almost unconsciously want a person to fail. Because, you know, people are awful.

No wait, that’s not right: ignore me, I’m rambling. It’s not a collective will for someone to fail - more like the creative must now obviously have the magic spell or password or voodoo doll to cause best-selling to happen so they must be left alone to do weave their genius and lay their golden egg. But I just don’t think it works like that. Sometimes runaway success is just inexplicable, like with Where the Crawdads Sing.

There are some great moments in the TV series, but that’s all. Claire Danes is amazing. Lizzy Caplan is great, J. Smith Cameron (Geri from Succession) is wonderful. There is a great exposition of that feeling you often get in marriage that you have been behaving like a dog-in-the-manger, ungrateful a-hole and suddenly you’re struck by the feeling that you are in fact surrounded by love and you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone and you better get back in that house and show up for your family.

But they are just moments. None of this is stopping me from really looking forward to her next novel, Long Island Compromise, which is published next year. But possibly not the inevitable TV series.

How about you? Did you enjoy Fleishman is in Trouble (either in a book or on screen)? Please leave a comment in the handy box below.