This amazing, dramatic, hilarious debut adult novel from a bestselling children’s writer is about modern America, and by extension modern everywhere...
Benjamin is an absolutely brilliant satirist and deftly juxtaposes the battlegrounds of marriage, parenthood and middle-class aspiration with the fight for truth and justice in the bigger political picture.
The Smash-Up is a talking points novel, by which I mean it strains hard to say everything about American politics, activism, social media, Me Too, marriage, capitalism, domestic terrorism — I could go on. Publishers are comparing it to Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble (2019). Both books place the angst of affluent Gen Xers under the microscope; both conceal a feminist jeremiad within a comic structure; and both take pleasure in taunting a male protagonist. Maddy’s flirting includes sending Ethan smutty gifs, wearing his shorts and calling him Daddy.