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About the Book

About the Book

The Smash-Up

Smart, sublime and wickedly clever, THE SMASH-UP captures --- then transcends --- our current polarized moment.
 
Ethan has always been one of the good guys, and for years, nobody has appreciated this fact more than his wife, Zo. Until now. Jolted into activism by the 2016 election, Zo has transformed their home into the headquarters for the local resistance, turning their comfortable decades-long marriage inside-out.

Meanwhile, their boisterous daughter, Alex, grows wilder by the day. Ethan’s former business partner needs help saving the media company they’d co-founded. Financial disaster looms. Enter a breezy, blue-haired millennial making her way through the gig economy. Suddenly, Ethan faces a choice unlike any he’s ever had to make.
 
Unfolding over fivet urbulent days in 2018, THE SMASH-UP wrestles shrewdly with some of the biggest questions of our time: What, exactly, does it mean to be a good guy? What will it take for men to break the “bro code”? How does the world respond when a woman demands more? Can we ever understand another's experiences…and what are the consequences of failing to try? Moving, funny and cathartic, this portrait of a marriage --- and a nation --- under strain is, ultimately, a magic trick of empathy, one that will make you laugh and squirm until its final, breathless pages.

Audiobook available; read by MacLeod Andrews, Rebecca Lowman, Dion Graham and Shayna Small

The Smash-Up
by Ali Benjamin

  • Publication Date: March 1, 2022
  • Genres: Fiction, Women's Fiction
  • Paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
  • ISBN-10: 0593229673
  • ISBN-13: 9780593229675