Book Summary and Reviews of The Trouble with You by Ellen Feldman

The Trouble with You by Ellen Feldman

The Trouble with You

A Novel

by Ellen Feldman

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • Published:
  • Feb 2024, 368 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About this book

Book Summary

In an exuberant post WWII New York City, a young woman is forced to reinvent her life and choose between the safe and the ethical, and the men who represent each.

Set in New York City in the heady aftermath of World War II when the men were coming home, the women were exhaling in relief, and everyone was having babies, The Trouble With You is the story of a young woman whose rosy future is upended in a single instant. Raised never to step out of bounds, educated in one of the Sister Seven Colleges for a career as a wife and mother, torn between her cousin Mimi who is determined to keep her a "nice girl"―the kind that marries a doctor―and her aunt Rose who has a rebellious past of her own, Fanny struggles to raise her young daughter and forge a new life by sheer will and pluck. When she gets a job as a secretary to the "queen" of radio serials―never to be referred to as soaps―she discovers she likes working, and through her friendship with an actress who stars in the series and a man who writes them, comes face to face with the blacklist which is destroying careers and wrecking lives. Ultimately, Fanny must decide between playing it safe or doing what she knows is right in this vivid evocation of a world that seems at once light years away and strangely immediate.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Set during the 1950s Red Scare, this novel features Fanny Fabricant, an unlikely heroine who makes a journey from conformity to independence and strength. Feldman has created a compelling woman who knows her own mind and insists on using it." ―Kirkus Reviews

"Rich in colorful characters, Feldman's riveting tale is one of resilience, determination, and hope." ―Booklist

"Ellen Feldman has done it again. This time she conjures up New York City in the post-war years, as loyalty oaths and blacklists begin to take their toll, and as the irresistible Fanny Fabricant grapples with familial expectations and societal conventions. The result is an indelible novel suffused with heart and history, fresh, fast-paced, and exhilarating." ―Stacy Schiff, New York Times bestselling author

"Emotionally compelling and gorgeously written, full of Feldman's trademark wit and wry observation, The Trouble with You is as addictive as the world of the 1950s soap operas in which the novel is set, and as serious and satisfying as the finest fiction being written today." ―Liza Gyllenhaal, author of A Place for Us and Local Knowledge

"I love this book in so many ways.... The descriptions of Charlie and Fanny working together amount to, for me, expert instruction in the craft of storytelling." ―Frederick E. Allen, former editor at New York, American Heritage, and Forbes

This information about The Trouble with You was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Janet Schneider

1950s Soap Opera Writer During The Red Scare
In Ellen Feldman’s timely new novel The Trouble With You, Fanny Fabricant has barely had a chance to welcome her beloved and happily-returned WWII veteran husband home when a sudden event radically alters her anticipated life course. Raised to be an excellent suburban housewife, she finds herself instead job hunting as a single mother in a postwar world where women were leaving the workforce, not entering it. Aided by her intrepid Aunt Rose, Fanny lands a coveted secretarial spot on a national radio show, where she begins to rebuild her life as an independent woman at a time when her peers are constrained by what their parents, their husbands and their country tell them they are allowed to have.

There is a lot at stake in Fanny’s world, with politics beginning to impact many workplaces. While navigating an increasingly complicated work environment, she is also raising a young daughter and gently dipping her toe back into the dating pool of the early 1950s, where she finds that most men have conventional expectations.

Faced with a moral dilemma and the chance to help a desperate family friend support himself, Fanny begins “fronting” for a blacklisted writer in what leads to a successful working/writing partnership. As this life-changing new career transforms both Fanny’s professional and personal lives, it transports the reader back in time to the early Cold War years when the American entertainment world was rocked by allegations of Communist influence.

As a lens into an earlier time with parallels to today, The Trouble With You delivers a moving look at the direct impact of paranoia and misinformation on individuals. In Fanny, author Ellen Feldman has created a riveting heroine who makes choices which feel authentic and true in a time when traditional gender roles are just beginning to expand. Fanny finds independence, a career and even love despite the inevitable conflict between tradition and a new reality. Not only is she a character well worth spending time with, her story is an inspiring and thoughtful exploration of the evolving nature of female ambition.

Book clubs will find much to discuss and ponder. Highly recommended.

Elizabeth@Silver's Reviews

Elizabeth@Silver's Reviews - A satisfying ending - historical fiction fans will enjoy
It is post World War II, and we meet Fanny Fabricant, her husband, Max, and their daughter Chloe. Fanny was the lucky one because her husband came back from the war. She wasn’t lucky for too long, though, because her life changed one night.

We follow Fanny as she goes to work much to the gossiping of other women at this time because women didn't work, but she had no choice.

THE TROUBLE WITH YOU dragged until mid point, caught my interest after that, but it still wasn’t a book I was anxious to get back to even though Ms. Feldman’s writing and research were well done.

My favorite character was Chloe…she was so sweet and innocent. Fanny was a well-thought-out character and one ahead of her time. I enjoyed following Fanny and was hoping for the best for her in the social attitudes of this era.

The ending was satisfying, and the book will be enjoyed by historical fiction fans and women’s fiction fans. 4/5

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Ellen Feldman Author Biography

Ellen Feldman, a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of The Living and the Lost, Paris Never Leaves You, Terrible Virtue (optioned by Black Bicycle for a feature film), The Unwitting, Next to Love, Scottsboro (shortlisted for the Orange Prize), The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, and Lucy.

Author Interview
Link to Ellen Feldman's Website

Other books by Ellen Feldman at BookBrowse
  • Next to Love jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more historical fiction...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    Suggested in the Stars
    by Yoko Tawada
    In Scattered All Over the Earth, Yoko Tawada's 2018 lightly dystopian novel, a ragtag group of young...
  • Book Jacket: Shred Sisters
    Shred Sisters
    by Betsy Lerner
    "No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister" is a wry aphorism that appears late in ...
  • Book Jacket: Model Home
    Model Home
    by Rivers Solomon
    Rivers Solomon's novel Model Home opens with a chilling and mesmerizing line: "Maybe my mother is ...
  • Book Jacket: The Mighty Red
    The Mighty Red
    by Louise Erdrich
    Permit me to break the fourth wall. Like any good reviewer, I aim to analyze a book dispassionately,...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Bog Wife
    by Kay Chronister

    Five West Virginia siblings unearth secrets after the rupture of a supernatural bargain tying their fate to their land.

  • Book Jacket

    In the Garden of Monsters
    by Crystal King

    A woman with no past, a man who knows her, and a monstrous garden that separates their worlds.

Book Club Giveaway!
Win Let Us Descend

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward imagines the life of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War in this instant classic.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J O the B

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.