This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman
This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman is a warm, witty, and sharply observed family saga about the small disagreements that can grow into enormous divides. When Jeanne Rubinstein dies, her sisters Sylvia and Helen are left grieving, but a seemingly ridiculous disagreement over an apple cake quickly turns into a stubborn silence that lasts for years. Meanwhile, their children and grandchildren are busy navigating divorces, relationships, careers, college applications, parenting, and the awkward process of growing into themselves.
Told through multiple perspectives, the novel moves across three generations of a Jewish family and captures the wonderfully messy reality of relatives who can frustrate, embarrass, support, and love one another, sometimes all in the same afternoon. Goodman brings a lively sense of humor to family expectations, aging, sibling rivalry, and the ways our past continues to influence the present.
The result is an engaging contemporary family novel filled with clever observations, memorable personalities, and surprisingly tender moments. Beneath the disagreements and comic misunderstandings lies a bigger question: what keeps a family connected when life keeps pulling everyone in different directions?
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
Key Ideas from the Book
Who Should Read This Book?
Told through multiple perspectives, the novel moves across three generations of a Jewish family and captures the wonderfully messy reality of relatives who can frustrate, embarrass, support, and love one another, sometimes all in the same afternoon. Goodman brings a lively sense of humor to family expectations, aging, sibling rivalry, and the ways our past continues to influence the present.
The result is an engaging contemporary family novel filled with clever observations, memorable personalities, and surprisingly tender moments. Beneath the disagreements and comic misunderstandings lies a bigger question: what keeps a family connected when life keeps pulling everyone in different directions?
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
- Sharp, intelligent humor
- Rich multi generational family portrait
- Memorable and distinctive characters
- Natural, lively dialogue
- Insightful observations about everyday life
- The large cast can be confusing initially
- Multiple perspectives require some attention
- The sentimental ending may not appeal to every reader
Key Ideas from the Book
- Family disagreements are rarely just about one thing. A seemingly trivial argument can carry years of memories, competition, expectations, and unresolved feelings underneath it.
- Family relationships are wonderfully complicated. People can be both deeply irritating and deeply important to us, often at the same time.
- Every generation carries its own expectations. Parents, children, and grandchildren each face different ideas about success, relationships, responsibility, and happiness.
- Growing older changes the meaning of family. Aging brings new challenges, but it can also create opportunities to reconsider old conflicts.
- Identity is shaped by where we come from. Family history, traditions, and shared experiences influence how people understand themselves.
- Small moments can reveal universal truths. Behind the family’s arguments, jokes, and everyday dramas are recognizable questions about love, belonging, and being understood.
Who Should Read This Book?
- Readers who enjoy contemporary family sagas and women’s fiction
- Fans of multi generational stories with multiple perspectives
- Anyone who loves witty novels about family relationships and sibling dynamics
- Readers interested in Jewish family life, traditions, and generational connections
- Fans of fiction with humor, warmth, and emotional insight
Home → Fiction → This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman
What kind of family story is this?
This Is Not About Us is a collection of linked stories that builds one multigenerational portrait. The Rubinstein family does not move through a single continuous plot; different relatives and moments take the foreground, allowing old arguments to look different when seen from another branch of the family.
The opening fracture is almost comic in scale: after the death of their sister, Sylvia and Helen turn a misunderstanding about apple cake into years of silence. Around that feud, children and grandchildren face divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs, and ballet recitals. Private disappointments accumulate beside ceremonies meant to hold everyone together.
The one minute decision
Choose this book if you like family fiction that gains meaning through repetition and changing points of view. A remark that feels minor in one story may become a grievance, inheritance, or joke in another. The linked structure lets the family appear as both a unit and a collection of people telling incompatible versions of the same history.
Skip it if you want one protagonist, a single dramatic arc, or a tidy resolution to every family conflict. The pleasure here may lie in pattern recognition: watching affection and irritation travel across generations without becoming simple opposites.
Book club questions
Read next on Pippla
My Friends - for another story about relationships accumulating meaning over many years, with friendship and art rather than one extended family at the center.
The Wedding People - for a concentrated social gathering where plans, appearances, and unexpected connection collide over a few days instead of generations.
Remarkably Bright Creatures - for grief, family connections, and belonging through a quieter mystery and a smaller cast.
Updated September 27, 2026
What kind of family story is this?
This Is Not About Us is a collection of linked stories that builds one multigenerational portrait. The Rubinstein family does not move through a single continuous plot; different relatives and moments take the foreground, allowing old arguments to look different when seen from another branch of the family.
The opening fracture is almost comic in scale: after the death of their sister, Sylvia and Helen turn a misunderstanding about apple cake into years of silence. Around that feud, children and grandchildren face divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs, and ballet recitals. Private disappointments accumulate beside ceremonies meant to hold everyone together.
The one minute decision
Choose this book if you like family fiction that gains meaning through repetition and changing points of view. A remark that feels minor in one story may become a grievance, inheritance, or joke in another. The linked structure lets the family appear as both a unit and a collection of people telling incompatible versions of the same history.
Skip it if you want one protagonist, a single dramatic arc, or a tidy resolution to every family conflict. The pleasure here may lie in pattern recognition: watching affection and irritation travel across generations without becoming simple opposites.
Book club questions
- Why can a small misunderstanding survive longer than the grief that helped create it?
- Which family rituals produce genuine connection, and which merely stage the appearance of harmony?
- How does changing perspective alter who seems unreasonable in a long running conflict?
- What do the younger generations inherit besides names, traditions, and expectations?
Read next on Pippla
My Friends - for another story about relationships accumulating meaning over many years, with friendship and art rather than one extended family at the center.
The Wedding People - for a concentrated social gathering where plans, appearances, and unexpected connection collide over a few days instead of generations.
Remarkably Bright Creatures - for grief, family connections, and belonging through a quieter mystery and a smaller cast.
Updated September 27, 2026
