The Trouble With You by Ellen Feldman (2024)
It took no time at all for this book to engross me fully and keep me flying though the pages until its end. While I've read any number of recent books that take a deservedly angry gaze at women diminished, patronized and marginalized by a patriarchal society, this one really hit home with its on-target historical context.
And the book accomplishes all this by placing its romantic triangle in the midst of post World War 2 America. It's an era when you can detect the beginnings, those inevitable tremors of societal change that will erupt into earthshaking changes for the decades to come.
Dutiful wife and young mother Florence 'Fanny' Fabricant suffers a cruel twist of fate when her doctor husband, who survived his war service, dies suddenly at home, leaving her a single mother to her toddler Chloe. Forced into a provider role she's unprepared for, Fanny takes a job re-typing soap opera scripts for a New York radio network.
Her work puts her in constant contact with the network's most prolific and talented writer, the brash, witty, devil-may-care rebel Charlie. But beneath his wisecracking cynicism, he silently rages at the vile 'red-baiting' of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the inquisitions of the House on Un-American Activities Committee, destroying lives and careers of writers and actors.
It doesn't take long for Fanny to find herself overwhelmed by the true events of the post war era. Charlie and her actress friend Ava are blacklisted by so called patriotic investigators, making them unemployable.. In addition to Charlie's 'frenemy flirting (which Fanny matches with her own inherent wit), Chloe's alarming, but temporary health scare amid the rampant, Polio epidemic touches off Fanny's budding romance with Ezra, Chloe's pediatrician.
The dramatic stakes (and Fanny's own conflicting emotions over the two men in her life) take an even more urgent turn when she agrees to use her name as a 'front' on Charlie's scripts so he can sell them. By that time, she's gradually discovered she's as talented a scriptwriter as Charlie. But Fanny's emerging abilities, self-worth and newly found independence do not sit well with Ezra, whose traditional view of marriage gender roles will consign her back to the job of full-time housewife. It's lucky Fanny relies on the bluntly direct, common sense mentoring and advice of her beloved Aunt Rose, a seamstress with a rebellious history of her own
Everything going on around Fanny kept me glued to this book.....the triangle, the surge of history and Fanny's own self revelations, which put her among the vanguard of women determined to pursue lives and careers that at the time, were thought of as only the province of men. There's real snap, crackle and pop in the dialogue exchanges, that would make this story a natural for any film or TV mini-series adaptation. The wit and insight stays rooted in Fanny's journey right up the final, more than satisfying finale.
An absolute 5 star item,(*****) and among the fastest, most ambitiously entertaining reads I've enjoyed this year. Don't leave this one off your TBR list.
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