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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I loved it. The point is that Libby can’t tell her story, orRachel’s, without first centering it around a man.[/quote]

Exactly. When everything shifted and that became clear, I suddenly saw the Toby BS through a different lens. It was a long way to go to get there, but for me, the payoff was definitely worth it, and I enjoyed the book much more.

The author is a smart, savvy woman. I don’t think she intended for the characters to be “relatable” in their specifics. But the book as a whole was constructed as commentary on the sad truth that women's stories often need to be folded into men’s stories in order to be told - especially if an author wants to be taken swriosly as literary fiction (red by men and women, alike) rather than relegated to “chick lit” (dismissed by men and read only by women.)[/quote]

Yup, this is it. I didn’t really enjoy it, but after I finished I appreciated what she was doing. I also resented having to read so much about Toby, from Toby’s perspective, to get to the payoff, even if that was the point. I’ve never recommended it to another reader.[/quote]

That resentment is definitely intended! She’s trying to raise your frustration to a boiling point before giving you the payoff - mimicking the frustration that working moms feel in the real world with everything stacked against them.[/quote]

As a divorced working mom, I should have empathized with the novel's mom. Instead, I just felt frustrated with the long, long exposition about Toby, who sort of resembled my X but not really. I guess if I were writing this, I'd start with the Toby stuff but cut it way back. [/quote]

PS, I should clarify that I was almost in Fleishman's position of suddenly having to take care of two kids, with one high school kid who choose to live with me FT and almost all the bills for the older kid's college. (XDH, a GS-15, somehow decided I could handle it all.) That circumstance made Toby a lot more sympathetic, and Rachel a whole lot less sympathetic, at least to me. Yes, probably the author wanted to ramp off the frustration before she switched perspective, to make the change even more dramatic. But to me, after Rachel absconded she never completely earned my sympathy after her return. [/quote]

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