This is Not About Us

I just finished reading Allegra Goodman's newest book, This Is Not About Us.  

I am blown away.  It was an incredible collection of stories that tied together so well I forgot at times I was not reading a novel.   The book spoke to me in so many ways.  So many of the life experiences were so relevant to my life like sibling rivalries. So many overlaps of the places I have attended and am still involved with.  Camp Ramah Palmer, Emerson College, Brandeis University.  I closed the back cover and announced to the empty room, " I am in love with Allegra Goodman!"  

This is a collection of short stories that follow a family through many lifecycle events.  

Reading this book and learning the perspectives of the various characters is enthralling.  You are pulled into the family dynamics, agreeing with some and finding fault with others. It is like living with your own relatives. Meeting up at get togethers and holidays and seeing the interaction between siblings, cousins and the aunts and uncles.

We meet the three Rubenstein sisters who are the matriarchs of the family. Jeanne, the sister who held the family together, is dying from cancer leaving Helen and Sylvia to figure out their place in the puzzle that has lost a piece of the whole.  At the shiva Sylvia turns up with an apple cake. Helen says that was her recipe and sees a slight in Sylvia's behavior.  It is not really about the apple cake, it is the competition and fighting for attention that siblings experience that never leaves the relationship. The estrangement will last through all the family lifecycle events that follow.  

In each story we meet the children and the grandchildren of this family. Seeing lfe from their perspective as they negotiate the everyday experiences of family and life. The balancing of carpools and after school activities, preparing for Bar/Bat Mitzvah and getting home to make dinner.  Keeping a marriage together or figuring out the divorce with children.  

We meet their families and see how the different personalities all work in concert with each other.  It is an incredible book that I think touches on so many personal issues that all of us can relate to.  I really felt like the author knew me and was paralleling my world. Every family has drama and disagreements.  Every family member just wants to be seen and loved. How we all fall into the traps of birth order and the competition for approval.

The author captured the personalities and needs of people, blending them between the short stories seamlessly. The book reads like a novel, not a set of individual stories.