Trouble Ahead

Elaine Bermitz reviews a Netflix series from the 2019 book ‘Fleishman in Trouble’.

As she faces her own demons and stays marginal throughout the book, he has to contend with and connect to the needs of his eight year old son and pre-adolescent daughter, a task which reveals every insecurity, inability, and missed aspiration in his character.

So far, so good. But the story isn't just Toby's story. It is written largely by one of his Gap-Year travelling companions, Libby, using her own dormant journalistic skills. Writing mainly in Toby's voice she reveals alongside his tragicomic predicament, her own boredom.

So we see the fears and worries of a little man who has set out to contend with the psychological demands of his overbearing family, his ongoing fears of being short and fat, the deluge of available sexual images which flood his social media outlets and