Review of the Day: This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman

Goodman’s book is a collection of 17 short stories about three generations of the fictional Rubinstein family. In my opinion, the book is good, but not great; I think the book would have been better if it had been reworked into a novel because it just did not feel coherent enough for me.

However, I did enjoy much of Goodman’s language. Here are a few examples:

Wendy said that she had always loved women but had been closeted—a word Helen found strangely offensive. She had great closets. She’d organized them long before closet organizing became a sport and a profession. The thought of her own daughter closeted seemed an insult not only to Helen’s intelligence, but to her housekeeping.

“Helen never listens to me,” Sylvia declared in front of the entire family assembled at Jeanne’s bedside. “I’m invisible to her.” 

Amazed at this mixed metaphor, Helen said, “Obviously I see you.”

At the end of the week, Richard picked up his new glasses. Nora was there, and all the displays, just as he had left them, but he came alone. The errand was ordinary, gray—until he left the store with his new lenses. Then the world changed. The train, the streets, the smallest details were precise. Revelation. Upgrade! At work he recognized his colleagues all the way down the hall. In restaurants he no longer mistook every pear-shaped woman for Debra. With his new prescription, he could read street signs. Walking through Old City he could discern individual red bricks. At Lily’s orchestra concert, he could pick her out playing her half-size cello, way up on the risers. There was a downside to such clarity. He noticed thick dust covering his shelves, a faint water stain on his kitchen ceiling. Outside he saw rotting leaves shellacked to sidewalks. Peeling paint. Wires wrapping tree branches, not just twinkling lights.

Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy via NetGalley; all opinions are my own.

epub. 336 pgs. 10 February 2026.