This Is Not About Us Summary By Chapter | Allegra Goodman
Introduction To This Is Not About Us (Chapter-by-Chapter Summary)
Have you ever watched a family splinter over something as simple as an apple cake—a dessert meant to symbolize love and heritage, turned into a weapon of spite?
Structured as a series of linked stories, the novel follows three sisters—Helen, Sylvia, and Jeanne—whose already complicated relationships fracture completely when Jeanne dies of lung cancer.
At the memorial service, Sylvia brings her own version of the family’s traditional apple cake against explicit wishes, and Helen vows never to speak to her again.
What follows is a masterful exploration of how small grievances echo through decades, affecting children and grandchildren who barely understand the original wound.
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Book Structure Overview
Total Chapters: 17 linked stories
Parts: Two phases – Jeanne’s illness and its aftermath
Prologue/Epilogue: None
Chapter Titles: Titled after key symbols/events (e.g., “Apple Cake”, “Nutcracker”)
Narrative Flow: Linear, multi-perspective, multi-generational
Book Table of Contents
Apple Cake
New Frames
F.A.Q.s
Ambrose
Kumquat
Wendybird
Redemption Song
Sheba
Tanglewood
Days of Awe
This Is Not About Us
A Challenge You Have Overcome
The Last Grown-Up
$
Nutcracker
Deal Breaker
Poppy
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This Is Not About Us Summary Chapter by Chapter
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This section contains detailed, chapter-by-chapter plot summaries.
Chapter 1: Apple Cake
Jeanne, the youngest of three sisters, is dying of lung cancer at seventy-four, leaving her older sisters Helen and Sylvia in a state of guilt-ridden grief.
The family gathers at Jeanne’s Tudor home, which has become a hospice filled with wilting flowers and unspoken instructions. Jeanne remains sardonic to the end, refusing religious rites and demanding a bagel while her sons, Dan and Steve, argue over her final wishes.
Helen spends her nights baking obsessively to prepare for the funeral, while Sylvia tries to paper over the reality of death with forced optimism.
After Jeanne dies, her sons decide against a burial in favor of cremation and a life celebration.
At the reception, Sylvia defies the family’s no homemade desserts rule by bringing her own version of Helen’s apple cake. Helen sees the family eating the cake and walks out in a fury, cementing a feud that lasts for years.
Chapter 2: New Frames
Richard Eisen, Sylvia’s son, is forty-five and navigating the early stages of a relationship with twenty-five-year-old Corinne.
At Corinne’s suggestion, he buys trendy black rectangular glasses to replace his old rimless ones, hoping to look like a new person.
His divorce from Debra has left him mercenary and scrambling for kitchen utensils while his daughters, Sophie and Lily, view his young girlfriend with silent disapproval.
Richard feels ancient and undeserving of happiness, haunted by Debra’s accusations of his selfishness. When he learns his mother Sylvia is in the hospital for vertigo, he rushes to Boston, only to find Debra has been calling Sylvia behind his back to manipulate the family.
Realizing his trendy lifestyle is a distraction from his daughters’ needs, Richard returns to his old-style glasses. He breaks up with Corinne, acknowledging that he cannot run away from his responsibilities as a father.
Chapter 3: F.A.Q.s
Phoebe returns to her parents’ home in New Jersey after a year spent living with her boyfriend, Chris, in Michigan. She is lethargic, sleeping fourteen hours a day, which causes her parents, Dan and Melanie, to bicker over whether she is recovering or growing down.
Phoebe inherits Grandma Jeanne’s violin but claims she has quit playing, causing disappointment during a family dinner with Uncle Steve and Aunt Andrea. Haunted by the instrument, she begins taking it on shuttle buses and eventually to Penn Station in New York.
She starts busking secretly, using the money to buy doughnuts and candy, finding a sense of practice in the anonymity of the crowd.
Her parents eventually track her down and film her playing Bach in the station, leading to an awkward but proud confrontation. Phoebe decides to return to Michigan for school but promises to keep playing her music.
Chapter 4: Ambrose
Twelve-year-old Lily is struggling with anxiety and failing math in the sixth grade. She retreats into a novel she is writing about a princess named Ambrose who turns into a swan at night.
Her parents, Debra and Richard, are called to a team meeting at school to discuss her safety and her tendency to hide under tables during lunch. Lily is often late to ballet class and fears her strict teacher, Gwen, but finds solace in a kind substitute teacher.
She wishes she could be homeschooled or live in a different century where girls didn’t have to face the pressures of modern school.
Despite her fear of a math test and a fight with her sister Sophie, Lily manages to get to ballet on time. The chapter ends with her dancing in center floor, feeling like she is lifting her wings to fly.
Chapter 5: Kumquat
Helen deals with the burden of her husband Charles’s Parkinson’s disease while maintaining the long-standing silence with her sister Sylvia. She renews her symphony subscription out of spite, knowing Sylvia will avoid certain programs that give her headaches.
At a concert, she unexpectedly meets her great-niece Phoebe and Phoebe’s new boyfriend, Wyatt. Helen discovers Phoebe has damaged Jeanne’s valuable violin and insists on paying for its professional restoration in Brookline.
Charles describes Helen as bracing, like a sour kumquat, because she says what people need rather than what they want to hear.
Phoebe eventually decides to leave school to busk cross-country with Wyatt in a van, a plan Helen finds common-sensical to oppose but impossible to stop. When Helen pays for the violin’s repair, she tries to force a large umbrella on the departing couple as a final act of unwanted charity.
Chapter 6: Wendybird
Wendy knits a pussy hat for her sister Pam after the 2016 election, but Pam fails to acknowledge the gift for over a week.
Wendy’s wife, Jill, a tough police officer, encourages Wendy to stand up for herself, but Wendy is addicted to her strange and estranged family. It turns out Pam was mourning the death of her cat, Shadow, which Helen reveals during a phone call.
During a birthday visit to Helen’s house, Jill discovers that Pam’s dog, Rosie, has shredded Wendy’s hand-knit hat. Jill confronts Pam in the middle of the night, threatening her to start treating Wendy with respect or lose her dog. Jill demands that Pam send a thank-you note within twenty-four hours for any future gifts.
Months later, Wendy is delighted to receive a prompt and formal thank-you text from Pam for a birthday donation.
Chapter 7: Redemption Song
Dan and Melanie host the first night of Passover, while Steve and Andrea host the second, in an attempt to divide and conquer the family holiday. Dan becomes a control freak during preparations, purging the entire kitchen of non-Passover food and fighting with Melanie over vegan ingredients for Phoebe and Wyatt.
The first seder is tense, with Dan shouting at his nephews and insulting his brother Steve’s career. The tension stems from memories of their father, Irving, a Holocaust survivor who made the holiday miserable with his own migraines and strict rules.
During the second seder at Steve’s house, the wobbly card table collapses, drenching the vegan seder plate in wine. The brothers retreat to the living room to drink Moscato and share memories of their father, finding a brief moment of reconciliation.
They watch the younger generation sing “Redemption Song,” realizing how much the family has changed.
Chapter 8: Sheba
Jamie, a conscientious dog walker in Cambridge, is cursed with roommates who are more academically successful than she is. She takes special care of a melancholy standard poodle named Sheba, who belongs to an economist named Hal.
Jamie meets Simon at a party, and they begin a tentative romance centered around walking Sheba together. During a lapse in judgment while Simon is whispering to her, Jamie drops Sheba’s leash, and the dog runs away.
Jamie is consumed by guilt, resigns from her job, and stops speaking to Simon. She eventually finds Sheba with a homeless man who demands $200 and kicks Jamie in the ribs before the dog bites him in her defense.
Hal refuses Jamie’s resignation, noting that she is now the most trustworthy person to walk Sheba because she will never lose her again.
Chapter 9: Tanglewood
The family gathers at Tanglewood for a summer concert, but the bright days of the sisters’ youth have faded into complicated custody schedules and digital distractions. Richard is anxious and angry, snapping at his daughters Sophie and Lily for missing their mother and using their phones.
Phoebe and Wyatt arrive unexpectedly in their van, bringing a sense of youthful romance and live music to the stuffy house.
During the concert, Sophie is caught using her phone, and Richard frog-marches his daughters out of the music shed in an embarrassing display of temper. He later regrets his fury, realizing he is ruining their lives with his rules.
That night, Wyatt plays his cello in the hallway to soothe Lily, who cannot sleep after the day’s drama. Lily falls asleep feeling safe and hidden for a hundred years by the music.
Chapter 10: Days of Awe
Richard drives Lily and Sophie to Weston for Yom Kippur, and Lily suffers from severe carsickness the whole way.
At the temple, the girls notice a memorial plaque for their Great-Aunt Jeanne and realize the depth of the family feud.
During the fast, Lily gets so hungry that she sneaks into the kitchen at night and finishes the remains of a honey cake. The next day, Sylvia takes Lily on a secret trip to McDonald’s and then to the cemetery to talk to her dead parents, Morris and Lillian.
At the gravesite, they encounter Helen, but the sisters refuse to acknowledge each other’s existence. Struck by the rabbi’s sermon about reconciling brothers, the girls make a solemn vow in a side chapel never to become estranged like their aunts.
Lily waits in fear to see if Sophie will reveal her honey cake sin, but Sophie keeps the secret, proving their vow is real.
Chapter 11: This Is Not About Us
Richard begins dating Heather, his daughter Lily’s Bat Mitzvah tutor, but they keep the relationship a secret to avoid drama during the ceremony.
Richard is impressed by Heather’s calm and sanity compared to the crazy of his past marriage. Debra approves of Heather as a teacher but remains oblivious to her relationship with Richard.
The Bat Mitzvah planning is stressful, involving rules about how fast Lily must chant her haftarah and expensive party favors.
At the rehearsal, Debra finally realizes that Richard and Heather are together after seeing a shared look between them.
Despite the awkwardness, Lily delivers a successful and moving poem about Noah’s Ark and climate change. Richard chooses peace and happiness, ignoring Sylvia’s complaints about the abrupt ending of the speech.
Chapter 12: A Challenge You Have Overcome
Steve loses his job in academic publishing as his company restructures to focus on interactive trainings rather than books.
He struggles with the feeling of being the working dead and initially refuses his brother Dan’s advice to go to coding camp.
His wife Andrea continues her work as a college counselor, but they are both devastated when their son Nate is rejected from Brown University.
Steve tries to maintain his dignity by writing a handwritten screed of a resignation letter, but is fired before he can send it. Feeling adrift in Manhattan, he eventually buys an overpriced ficus tree as an anniversary gift for Andrea.
He returns home, wrenching his back on the train, but feels a sense of lucky resilience to have his family. He decides to try ghostwriting for an indie publisher to keep the family solvent.
Chapter 13: The Last Grown-Up
Debra finalized the divorce paperwork two years after the marriage actually ended, feeling weird and painful like picking a scab.
She manages the household alone with her dog Max, constantly fast-forwarding to the worst-case scenarios for her daughters’ futures. Richard tells her that he and Heather are engaged and expecting a baby in January. Debra is stunned and feels a pang of envy, remembering when Richard refused to have a third child with her.
She insists on a team meeting to ensure the girls are told about the baby in a sensitive way. Heather and Richard ignore her advice and reveal the pregnancy and engagement all at once.
Debra feels like the last grown-up on earth, framing the family’s proposal for her daughters while processing her own heartache.
Chapter 14: $
In the Rubinstein family, money is a taboo subject, but Dan and Steve are surprised by the generous bequests Jeanne left to various charities. Steve is struggling with unemployment and a cracked steering column in his Subaru, forcing him to take a ghostwriting job for Cloverleaf publishing.
His first assignment is a family history of the Old Country, which he initially writes with a harsh, realistic tone of shtetl poverty.
The author rejects the draft, demanding a sweet and cozy tone with rose-colored glasses. Steve gets drunk at a bar and rewrites the memoir as a fairy tale of baking bread and flickering Sabbath candles.
To his surprise, the author loves the new version, and Steve realizes that in self-publishing, the author’s dream is more important than art. He accepts the contract, recognizing that he is living by his wits and remains a poet of loss.
Chapter 15: Nutcracker
Sophie and Lily are deeply involved in the Mishkin Ballet Academy, spending their winters rehearsing for the Nutcracker. Debra is horrified by the toxic culture of the studio, where the teacher Nastia Mishkin tells sixteen-year-old Sophie no bread and salad salad salad.
Despite the emotional abuse and the pressure to stay thin, the girls are bewitched and refuse to leave the studio.
Debra tries to recruit Richard and Heather to help pull the girls out, but they disagree on the timing and the necessity. At the dress rehearsal, Debra feels shunned by other dance moms who have fully committed to the dream of professional ballet.
During the performance, Lily is a star while Sophie is only modest and soft, leading to a heartbreaking comparison by Nastia. Debra realizes that the spells still worked even when you become a mother, and she cannot yet break her daughters’ dedication to the dance.
Chapter 16: Deal Breaker
Pam is secretly dating John O’Neill, a non-Jewish, mostly bald, divorced lawyer with a slight blink in his eye. She keeps him hidden from Helen to avoid judgment, but eventually reveals the relationship during a rainy Thanksgiving dinner.
To Pam’s shock, her parents are delighted, not because of John, but because they realize his daughter Isabella is technically Jewish through her mother.
The relationship becomes strained as John repeatedly postpones Pam meeting Isabella due to his commitment to his ex-wife’s medical emergencies. Pam feels extraneous and offstage in John’s life, realizing he is more committed to his old family than his new one.
She breaks up with him, and Helen immediately disowns the man she never even met. Pam finds a strange comfort in her mother’s daunting clarity and total lack of sentimentality.
Chapter 17: Poppy
Two years have passed, and the sisters Sylvia and Helen are still estranged, despite Sylvia’s hope for a higher cause to unite them. Richard and Heather have a baby boy, and Sylvia is haunted by the fact that she has three grandchildren while Helen has none.
Heather insists on a home birth in a tub, which Sylvia finds gross and dangerous, but Sophie and Richard are there to help. The baby is named Charlie after Sylvia’s father, but Sylvia is disappointed by Richard’s cockamamie story about the name meaning free man.
During the bris, Wendy represents Helen’s side of the family, and Debra shows up to support her ex-husband’s new family. Helen sends four heavy boxes of her own daughters’ old Jewish children’s books to the baby, a gift that feels like both a blessing and a reproach.
The book ends with the family eating cannoli and Wendy teaching Lily to play guitar while the baby sleeps, oblivious to the family’s long history of rifts and gifts.
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