This Is Not About Us

• Author: Allegra Goodman
• Genre: Literary Fiction
• Publication Date: February 10, 2026
• Publisher: The Dial Press

Thank you to NetGalley and The Dial Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A kaleidoscopic portrait of a modern American family—steadfast, complicated, begrudging, and loving—from the bestselling author of Isola.

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.

This is a new-to-me author, and it caught my attention with not just the beautiful cover, but with the idea of family dynamics and especially the intergeneration dynamics. The fact that it was about a Jewish family only made me more interested. However, this ended up being a difficult book for me to rate.

Reading a story about a modern, thoroughly assimilated Jewish family is always something I like to see. I wanted to love this book right from the start, but it was one of those that became more enjoyable as it went on. Every Jewish family practices in their own ways, with some making Judaism and faith a bigger part of their regular routine and family basis than others. The sprawling descendants of the three Rubinstein sisters belong to either a reform or conservative congregation, because the women wear tallit, or a woven prayer shawl. 

Reading about a Jewish family always brings up my own family dynamics, and I can’t help but compare and contrast the way the holidays and rituals are done within the Rubinstein family and my own. I found a lot of commonalities between this fictional family and my actual family. Grudges seem to be a thing common in older generations, so I clearly saw my family on the pages at times, especially between the long-standing feud between Helen and Sylvia, the two remaining sisters. Often, these grudges seem to be about something very minor that gets blown out of proportion, like Helen staying mad at Sylvia for baking ‘her’ apple cake recipe for their sister’s shiva. It wound up being a massive breach within the family. 

The perspectives vary from chapter to chapter. Some characters feature more frequently in the book than others, and I would have liked to see more even character development. Characters like Debra, Richard, and Sylvia are more well-developed characters than others, such as Wendy and Pam. They only feature in a couple of chapters, and even then they are only minimally developed. Additionally, rather than a flowing narrative throughout the book, each chapter read more like a minimally related vignette. It felt more like a collection of short stories that was all based on a sprawling family. Even so, it still allowed for more insight than a story with only one or two perspective characters, and offered more of a birds-eye view of the family and how they interact.

Initially, I really struggled with the characters. There wasn’t really a single one that I found even a little likable for so much of the book. Pretty much every family member or unit got at least one chapter of their own. Fortunately, there is a family tree at the beginning of the book to make it easier to keep track of who is who and how they are related. But over the course of the book, there were certain family members who I felt really showed a lot of growth, and I even found some of them to be more likable than they were early on. In particular, I was incredibly impressed with the character arcs and growth I saw in Richard and Debra, who made a lot of positive changes especially towards the end of the book.

While there didn’t really seem to be a centralized plot, this wound up being a long wander through the branches of the Rubinstein family tree. It’s very much a character-focused book, and while we don’t see as much change in the older generations, the children and grandchildren of the sisters are a lot more open to growth and change. 

Overall, this wound up being a more enjoyable read than I was expecting it to be after reading the first 20%. I was starting to consider DNFing the book, but I’m glad that I stuck with it, because it turned out to be pretty good. There are a lot of issues that are touched upon in the story, some of which are explored more in depth, like grief, anxiety, and family expectations. Other topics, like eating disorders, aren’t delved into but they do appear and get addressed superficially. I would have liked to see the characters be equally well-developed, but even so, I couldn’t help but see my own family in this one. We might fight, we may not all get along, but at heart, we’re family. I might not like everyone in my family, but it’s never a question that I love them. And that’s the same vibe I got from the Rubinstein family.

Bottom line: It takes a little to get going, but some of the family members do become more likable over time. It’s worth the read.

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