This is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman
Was this just a brief skirmish, or the beginning of a thirty-year feud? In the Rubenstein family, it could go either way.
When their beloved sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into a decade of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives—divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals—their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible.
With This Is Not About Us, master storyteller Allegra Goodman—whose prior collection was heralded as “one of the most astute and engaging books about American family life” (The Boston Globe)—returns to the form and subject that endeared her to legions of readers. Sharply observed and laced with humor, This Is Not About Us is a story of growing up and growing old, the weight of parental expectations, and the complex connection between sisters—a big-hearted book about the love that binds a family across generations.
Review: A huge thank you to The Dial Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel that will be out on February 10th!
"His family was a weather system rolling in. Rain, wind, sleet."
This is a contemporary story that follows three generations of a Jewish American family, the Rubinsteins. Told as a collection of interconnected short stories, this book explores the intricacies and nuances of familial relationships.
This book opens with a death and ends with a birth, and the middle is made of all the in between that make up a life. The opening story follows Jeanne, who is dying of cancer while her sisters Sylvia and Helen and all their families visiting her. There is a sisterly dispute over an apple cake that is served that triggers a decade of silence between the surviving sisters. This inciting loss and event set the stage for the rest of the book.
While parts of this are deeply moving, I appreciated all the humor laced throughout this! I was especially amused by the chapter that follows Dan as he slowly becomes unglued trying to make a vegan seder meal to appease his adult daughter. The image of him manically throwing out food they couldn't eat, stubbornly refusing to let his brother bring anything non-vegan, and then the whole lot of them sitting around still hungry after their much agonized over meal was so comical.
This was such a unique approach to writing about an extended family. I love how different characters faded in and out of prominence in each story. Goodman does such an excellent job of putting herself into the headspace of different characters. Certain family members who seem overbearing or cold in some chapters then shift and gain the reader's empathy as the third person perspective changes in later chapters. While each chapter can absolutely stand alone as a short story, they are each so inextricably linked to the rest of the book and are arranged in chronological order. Events taking shape in earlier stories evolve and expand in later chapters, but the reader gets to view them through the lens of a different family member.
I especially loved following the story of Richard (Sylvia's son) and his ex-wife Debra and their daughters. All four are still adjusting to life after the divorce and the readers gets chapters from Richard, Debra, and one of the daughter's perspectives. I love how different Debra comes across as a person when viewed from her ex-husband's perspective versus her own chapter or even her ex-mother-in-law. It is all about the eye of the beholder and Goodman is brilliant at fully placing herself in the mindset of the character whose perspective she's writing.
I was also deeply moved by the chapter on Steve attempting to find a new job when his writing job virtually becomes extinct: "He should be fixing Subarus. He should have gone into insurance like his brother - but no, he had become a poet, contemplating other kinds of loss." The tragedy of the vanishing artist in today's age! I was both stricken and amused by his chapter.
A moving family saga that skillfully introduces the reader to a whole cast of characters. Despite the many family members, we get an intimate and up-close look at so many of them, as well as the role they play in their family.
Stars: 4
Related Title:
- Isola by Allegra Goodman
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