Library Journal
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"Apple Cake," the first story in Goodman's (Isola) accomplished collection, focuses on 74-year-old Jeanne, a former musician and teacher who is dying of cancer. Her older sisters, Helen and Sylvia, cope with the stress by baking. While each sister tries to outdo the other, no one can beat Sylvia's apple cake. After Jeanne dies, her sons ask Helen and Sylvia not to bring their baking to the funeral reception. When Sylvia ignores the request, a battle ensues, and Helen refuses to speak to her ever again. Subsequent stories describe branches of the sprawling Rubinstein family as they navigate the sisters' feud, and everything else life throws at them. In "New Frames," Sylvia's recently divorced son Richard attempts to juggle dating while dealing with his ex and sharing custody of his two daughters. The title story depicts the complexities of his youngest daughter's bat mitzvah. These stories, some of which appeared in the New Yorker between 2014 and 2024, have been revised and stitched together into a single narrative line. VERDICT Goodman deftly handles the dynamics and cultural nuances of this Jewish American family with humor, sensitivity, and a certain amount of irony.—Jacqueline Snider

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Goodman offers an unsparingly frank, wryly funny take on a multigenerational American family. Almost exactly one year after the publication of Goodman’s wonderful work of historical fiction,Isola, the author returns with a very different novel—yet one that is no less insightful, enthralling, and eminently enjoyable to read. This time, Goodman trains her gimlet eye on the complicated relationships between the members the fictional Rubinstein family—and finds both humor and pathos in a modern Jewish American clan. In the first chapter, three generations congregate around the death bed of Jeanne, who at age 74 is the youngest of the three Rubinstein sisters and yet, if she’ll ever release her iron grip on life, will be the first to die. The scene, in which Jeanne’s sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren; elder sisters Sylvia and Helen; and nieces and nephews gather to fuss and wait, might lend itself to sentimentality. Not in Goodman’s hands. By the end of the chapter, a squabble over an apple cake has blown up the relationship between Sylvia and Helen. The sisters are determined never to speak again. “That was the end,” Goodman writes. And yet it’s just the beginning of a novel that chronicles marriages and divorces, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals, holidays and funerals, and finds within milestone events and quotidian moments the meaning—and madness—of family. As Goodman recounts the Rubinsteins’ sibling conflicts, grievances, and grudges, their parenting triumphs and failures, and the many ways they all love and infuriate, push away and yet crave to connect with one another, she holds up a mirror to us all.This Is Not About Us could have been calledThis Is All About Us or, perhaps,This Is About All of Us. Like an exquisitely baked apple cake, Goodman’s delicious and deeply perceptive novel is something to savor. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
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Goodman (Isola) delivers a bighearted linked story collection about a family’s travails. In the opener, “Apple Cake,” cancer-stricken Jeanne Rubinstein lies on her deathbed, stubbornly refusing to accept her terminal prognosis. As the family sits vigil, the baked goods provided by Jeanne’s older sister, Helen, a consummate homemaker, are upstaged by middle sister Sylvia’s superior apple cake, which sets off a feud that underscores the dramas playing out in subsequent entries. Sylvia’s son, Richard, goes through a divorce in “New Frames” and then embarks on a new romance in “Poppy,” while other stories trace the spats and reconciliations between Helen’s daughters, Wendy and Pam, as when Wendy frets over not hearing from Pam after knitting and sending her a “pussy hat” following the 2016 election. Also chronicled is the bickering between Jeanne’s sons, Dan and Steve, particularly in “Redemption Song,” when they each host the family seder on alternating nights. Meanwhile, the youngest generation of Rubinsteins—in their teens and 20s—try to find their way, with free spirit Phoebe embracing her interest in music. Each story succeeds on its own; taken together, they reveal how a family’s bonds are shaped and tested by tradition as well as by each individual’s recurring patterns. In their messiness and constant striving for harmony, the Rubinsteins are wholly relatable. This is one to treasure. (Feb.)