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A review by komet2020
The Trouble with You by Ellen Feldman
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
The Trouble with You is the BEST novel it has been my pleasure to read thus far in 2024. Indeed, it may be the most satisfying, compelling novel that I have read for many a moon.
The story begins in a cozy family home in Suburban New Jersey on Christmas Day 1947. Max Fabricant, the husband, is a recently returned war veteran from Europe, where he had served as an Army doctor in the field, working at saving lives whilst Death hovered ever near. Like other returned veterans, he was in the process of putting the war behind and getting his life back on track, intent on developing a flourishing medical career in Manhattan. Fanny, his wife, is a college graduate (rare among many women of her socioeconomic status in the U.S. at that time), feeling blessed to have Max in her life, for their relationship is very much a complimentary and mutually supportive bulwark in a world redefining itself in ways shaped by a dawning Cold War. A war in which people would be forced to choose sides, because to be neutral or on the "wrong side" would be seen by society and the powers-that-be in the U.S. as tantamount to treason.
Max and Fanny have a daughter, Chloe, who is almost 6. She is to be a flower girl in a wedding the family will be attending at the Hotel Pierre in New York. It is a very joyous occasion marred only by the onset of a wholly unexpected winter storm that leaves New York and the surrounding areas with a deluge of heavy snow. Luckily, Max, Fanny, and Chloe managed to make the trek home. Soon thereafter Chloe is put to bed, and Max is helping his wife to undress -- the two of them engaged in a playful badinage -- when after walking over to the closet, she says: " 'Honey, can you --- ' She stopped. What were the clothes --- his suit, several of her dresses and skirts and blouses --- doing on the floor? Later she'd realize he must have pulled them down when he'd grabbed the pole to keep from falling. But he had fallen. He was lying on his side, his body twisted, has face as white as the pleated shirt she'd danced against all evening, his eyes terrifyingly blank.
"She didn't remember calling the ambulance, but she must have, because it came, though it took forever to get through the snow. All she remember was sitting beside him, holding his hand in both of hers, begging him not to leave her."
Fanny's life is jolted, given a hard shove, leaving her with Chloe to raise alone and at a loss as to how to put herself on an even keel. She manages for a time to live on the payout from Max's life insurance plan. A widow's life was one to be pitied. Fanny's family and relatives (in particular, her Aunt Rose, who, as the novel progresses, is revealed to be a rather forward-thinking woman who has always moved to the beat of a different drummer, with a passion for progressive politics and social justice, having worked as a seamstress to help pay her brothers' university tuition; this latter skill would stand Rose in good stead, for she gained a reputation for quality work which netted her lots of upper class clients) offer what help they can.
Fanny eventually finds a job in Manhattan as a secretary for a business that produces radio serials (i.e. radio soap operas). When one of the writers on one of the shows the business produces and broadcasts is blacklisted and let go, because of his left wing leanings, Fanny’s life becomes more problematical. This writer is Charlie Berlin, who comes to later figure prominently in the lives of both Fanny and Chloe. The Red Scare is on and where Fanny works, actors and writers are fearful of being branded as “subversives” or "un-American" and having their careers destroyed.
The author does a superb job of revealing the dynamic fluidity of both Fanny and Chloe's lives as they are played out over the following decade. During this time, Fanny makes the acquaintance of Dr. Ezra Rapaport, a pediatrician who had been a classmate of Max's at medical school. Fanny had gone to see him because of some unexplained stomach complaints Chloe had been having with mounting regularity after returning from summer camp, where she had been with her cousin Belle (whose mother Mimi - Fanny's straitlaced cousin - was a wartime widow who would soon remarry a man who loved her and assured her of the social and financial security women then were expected to have from a husband). The source of the stomach complaints was from Chloe's yearning for a father in her life. Like Fanny, she missed Max and sensed the emotional emptiness that her mother with which Fanny often grappled.
A loving relationship slowly develops between Dr. Rapaport and Fanny, while at the same time Fanny surreptitiously enters into a literary collaboration with Charlie through which she acts as a front, passing off scripts Charlie had written for radio serials as her own, which supplements her income considerably.
There are also a lot of interesting and, for me, unexpected situations that develop among the major characters of the novel. But I won't give any of that away. The writing in this novel runs smooth and hardly a word is wasted. The characters ring true. As a reader, they are real and tangible to me. I almost feel how fearful people in those times must have felt of being seen as out of step with what was considered “normal behavior” in the country.
Usually in a novel, there are winners and losers. But as far as I can tell in The Trouble with You, everyone comes out ahead or in a satisfactory, stable situation in their lives. I now am determined to search out Ellen Feldman's other novels.
By all means, read The Trouble with You. It's a delightful, highly readable gem of a novel.
The story begins in a cozy family home in Suburban New Jersey on Christmas Day 1947. Max Fabricant, the husband, is a recently returned war veteran from Europe, where he had served as an Army doctor in the field, working at saving lives whilst Death hovered ever near. Like other returned veterans, he was in the process of putting the war behind and getting his life back on track, intent on developing a flourishing medical career in Manhattan. Fanny, his wife, is a college graduate (rare among many women of her socioeconomic status in the U.S. at that time), feeling blessed to have Max in her life, for their relationship is very much a complimentary and mutually supportive bulwark in a world redefining itself in ways shaped by a dawning Cold War. A war in which people would be forced to choose sides, because to be neutral or on the "wrong side" would be seen by society and the powers-that-be in the U.S. as tantamount to treason.
Max and Fanny have a daughter, Chloe, who is almost 6. She is to be a flower girl in a wedding the family will be attending at the Hotel Pierre in New York. It is a very joyous occasion marred only by the onset of a wholly unexpected winter storm that leaves New York and the surrounding areas with a deluge of heavy snow. Luckily, Max, Fanny, and Chloe managed to make the trek home. Soon thereafter Chloe is put to bed, and Max is helping his wife to undress -- the two of them engaged in a playful badinage -- when after walking over to the closet, she says: " 'Honey, can you --- ' She stopped. What were the clothes --- his suit, several of her dresses and skirts and blouses --- doing on the floor? Later she'd realize he must have pulled them down when he'd grabbed the pole to keep from falling. But he had fallen. He was lying on his side, his body twisted, has face as white as the pleated shirt she'd danced against all evening, his eyes terrifyingly blank.
"She didn't remember calling the ambulance, but she must have, because it came, though it took forever to get through the snow. All she remember was sitting beside him, holding his hand in both of hers, begging him not to leave her."
Fanny's life is jolted, given a hard shove, leaving her with Chloe to raise alone and at a loss as to how to put herself on an even keel. She manages for a time to live on the payout from Max's life insurance plan. A widow's life was one to be pitied. Fanny's family and relatives (in particular, her Aunt Rose, who, as the novel progresses, is revealed to be a rather forward-thinking woman who has always moved to the beat of a different drummer, with a passion for progressive politics and social justice, having worked as a seamstress to help pay her brothers' university tuition; this latter skill would stand Rose in good stead, for she gained a reputation for quality work which netted her lots of upper class clients) offer what help they can.
Fanny eventually finds a job in Manhattan as a secretary for a business that produces radio serials (i.e. radio soap operas). When one of the writers on one of the shows the business produces and broadcasts is blacklisted and let go, because of his left wing leanings, Fanny’s life becomes more problematical. This writer is Charlie Berlin, who comes to later figure prominently in the lives of both Fanny and Chloe. The Red Scare is on and where Fanny works, actors and writers are fearful of being branded as “subversives” or "un-American" and having their careers destroyed.
The author does a superb job of revealing the dynamic fluidity of both Fanny and Chloe's lives as they are played out over the following decade. During this time, Fanny makes the acquaintance of Dr. Ezra Rapaport, a pediatrician who had been a classmate of Max's at medical school. Fanny had gone to see him because of some unexplained stomach complaints Chloe had been having with mounting regularity after returning from summer camp, where she had been with her cousin Belle (whose mother Mimi - Fanny's straitlaced cousin - was a wartime widow who would soon remarry a man who loved her and assured her of the social and financial security women then were expected to have from a husband). The source of the stomach complaints was from Chloe's yearning for a father in her life. Like Fanny, she missed Max and sensed the emotional emptiness that her mother with which Fanny often grappled.
A loving relationship slowly develops between Dr. Rapaport and Fanny, while at the same time Fanny surreptitiously enters into a literary collaboration with Charlie through which she acts as a front, passing off scripts Charlie had written for radio serials as her own, which supplements her income considerably.
There are also a lot of interesting and, for me, unexpected situations that develop among the major characters of the novel. But I won't give any of that away. The writing in this novel runs smooth and hardly a word is wasted. The characters ring true. As a reader, they are real and tangible to me. I almost feel how fearful people in those times must have felt of being seen as out of step with what was considered “normal behavior” in the country.
Usually in a novel, there are winners and losers. But as far as I can tell in The Trouble with You, everyone comes out ahead or in a satisfactory, stable situation in their lives. I now am determined to search out Ellen Feldman's other novels.
By all means, read The Trouble with You. It's a delightful, highly readable gem of a novel.