Allegra Goodman, Her Stories, and the Messiness of Family

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: The Book Case
Episode: Allegra Goodman, Her Stories, and the Messiness of Family
Date: February 19, 2026
Hosts: Charlie (Pete) Gibson, Kate Gibson
Guests: Allegra Goodman (author), Sarah Lacy (bookstore owner)

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Main Theme

This episode explores the art of writing complex family stories, focusing on Allegra Goodman's new novel This Is Not About Us, which investigates the lively, flawed, and loving Rubenstein family. The hosts discuss with Goodman how she crafts multi-generational, multi-character narratives that feel both funny and true, and why leaving things unresolved is sometimes the most authentic choice. The second segment features Sarah Lacy, owner of "The Best Bookstore" in Palm Springs and Union Square, discussing the business and passion of running successful independent bookstores.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Rubenstein Family and Allegra Goodman's Approach to Family Fiction

• Goodman describes the Rubensteins as “good people who are flawed, people who are funny, people who fight, who love each other and squabble and are trying to raise their children and don’t listen to them. They’re actually a lot like many of us. You know, I would describe them as real.” (Allegra Goodman, 05:38)
• The book's structure: composed of distinct but interconnected chapters, each focusing on a character or small group, which together create a novel with a clear narrative arc.
  • Goodman calls it a “serial novel,” akin to 19th-century storytelling, as many chapters first appeared as stories in The New Yorker. (07:33)
• Organic creation: Goodman began with a central “apple cake story” (“the trunk of the tree”) and allowed the characters’ stories to branch out organically. (06:19)

2. Humor and Relatability

• Kate Gibson highlights the book’s humor and universality: “This book is very funny. It is hilariously funny. You will hear yourselves no matter what your family is like or the family you’ve chosen for yourself. There’s nothing quite like the arguments over the dinner table, and this book captures that perfectly.” (Kate Gibson, 02:41)

3. Crafting Multi-character Narratives

• Despite the intimidating number of major characters (about 20), Goodman manages to keep them all distinct, partly via a family tree and partly through unique voices.
  • “They come so alive for you as you read it.” (Pete Gibson, 03:38)
• Each chapter can be read as a short story but collectively holds as a novel, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” (Allegra Goodman, 07:33)

4. Writing Process: Plotter or Pantser?

• Goodman describes her writing as “improvisation—it's like jazz improvisation. You have certain themes… and then as you get into it, you start riffing on that, especially when the characters are talking to each other just as the voices in jazz, you know, exchange, you know, toss melody back and forth.” (Allegra Goodman, 08:38)
• She maintains outlines but allows for organic development, blending planning with spontaneity.

5. Characters’ Agency and Evolution

• Goodman notes she’s rarely blindsided by her characters’ actions: “Mostly I know what they’re going to do… because I know the kind of people they are… Underneath, there’s this deep knowledge.” (Allegra Goodman, 09:47)
• On open endings: The book intentionally avoids neat resolutions or “sentimental tying up with a ribbon.”
  • “Alive means that they keep growing… there's going to be no sentimental sort of tying up with a ribbon in this family. But you are so right. They love each other desperately.” (Allegra Goodman, 15:08)

6. The Title: This Is Not About Us

• The title originates from a chapter about a Bat Mitzvah, playing with the idea of shifting attention away from oneself—a motif throughout the novel.
  • “I like it because… in fiction you often recognize people you know, or you recognize bits of yourself. And sometimes that’s uncomfortable. And we often try to deny that it hits so close to home…” (Allegra Goodman, 12:46)

7. Authenticity and Family Dynamics

• The book captures the messy, loving contradictions of family life—humor, passive-aggression, squabbles, and deep affection, with special recognition to passive aggressiveness reminiscent of “Minnesota nice.”
  • “You’ve got that passive aggressive business down pretty well.” (Pete Gibson, 14:22)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We don’t always say what we mean. We don’t always mean what we say.” (Allegra Goodman, 13:33)
• “It’s a serial novel. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” (Allegra Goodman, 07:33)
• “In many ways, they’re not going to change. There’s going to be no sentimental tying up with a ribbon in this family. But you are so right, they love each other desperately.” (Allegra Goodman, 15:08)
• “We write what we know.” (Allegra Goodman, on family dynamics, 14:22)
• (Joking about passive-aggressive relatives) “If there’s a passive aggressive family better depicted, I don’t know one other than the Rubensteins.” (Pete Gibson, 14:14)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [05:38] – Goodman introduces the Rubenstein family
• [06:19] – Origin of the “apple cake” story and the novel’s organic growth
• [07:33] – Discussion of serial novel format and its development
• [08:38] – Goodman on improvisation and writing process
• [09:47] – How well Goodman knows her characters; on their “surprising” her
• [12:15] – The meaning behind the book’s title
• [14:22] – Discussing depiction of passive-aggressive family dynamics
• [15:08] – Why the book avoids closure and tidy endings
• [18:16] – Rapid fire: Authors Goodman always reads (Ishiguro, Tolstoy, unspecified contemporary)
• [18:51] – Goodman’s “aha” moment about fiction as a teen
• [19:36] – Books Goodman rereads most (Middlemarch, Moby Dick, Oz books)
• [20:03] – Best writing advice: “Don’t talk about your work while you’re doing it. Just write it and talk about it after you’re done with it.” (from Goodman’s grandmother)
• [21:31] – Praise for Goodman’s structural skill: “She sticks every landing.”
• [23:02] – Segment shift: Interview with Sarah Lacy of “The Best Bookstore”
• [25:48] – Lacy on why bookselling is easier than journalism
• [28:16] – Lacy describes her method to find hidden gem books for her stores

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Sarah Lacy and "The Best Bookstore"

Running a Successful Independent Bookstore

• Lacy and her husband, both entrepreneurs, opened bookstores in Palm Springs and Union Square, turning passion and business savvy into high-profit, hospitality-driven literary destinations.
  • “We have 3x the sales per square foot of an average bookstore. We have 2x the revenue per employee...” (Sarah Lacy, 27:23)
• Distinct store experience: “Our bookstore is the opposite” of the stereotypical “angry Gen X person with a cat” image; instead, it’s bright, greeting-heavy, and curated for discovery. (27:50)
• Curation method: Lacy skims covers and reads the first 30 pages of every galley that catches her eye, seeking under-the-radar fiction, especially debuts. (28:20)

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Final Thoughts and Closing

• Goodman’s coda: Appreciation for the father-daughter podcast, seeing it as its own family story. “As somebody who now has four grown kids, they're like my favorite people. So I love that you guys are doing this. That's my coda.” (Allegra Goodman, 31:32)
• Kate Gibson underscores the skill in Goodman’s ability to “stick every landing” in a book of multiple, story-like chapters. (21:31)
• The podcast concludes with gratitude to guests and encouragement to check out the featured independent bookstores.

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Tone:
Warm, down-to-earth, literary, and lightly humorous—reflecting the hosts’ affection for both their subjects and each other. The conversations with Goodman and Lacy are engaging, deeply bookish, and brimming with admiration for both craft and community.

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For Listeners: Why You Should Check Out This Episode

• Dive into how great family fiction is crafted—funny, heartfelt, unresolved yet complete.
• Get writing advice from a contemporary master of character and structure.
• Learn about the business and joy of running innovative independent bookstores.
• Enjoy the chemistry of enthusiastic readers and professionals passionate about books, families, and stories.

Transcript

[Pete Gibson]

Every act of change begins with a neighbor, with someone saying, we take care of each other. Here in food banks and food pantries, neighbors pack fresh food and dignity into every box, moving food from farms to families through Feeding America's nationwide network. So when that box reaches a home, it carries more than food. It carries a promise that together we can end hunger. Feeding America, led by neighbors. Give now to [e-mail] Foreign. Bibliophiles, or as Kate likes to refer to you, as book nerds. Good to have you with us for the podcast again. And, Kate, I had some reaction to last week's podcast, which I'll tell you about after you introduce yourself briefly.

[Kate Gibson]

Hi, I'm Kate. And now I'm interested to find out what reaction you got to last week's show before we start on this week's show.

[Pete Gibson]

Well, a couple of people. Well, they were two together. They. And they had both heard the podcast, and they said, I want to talk about your podcast this week. And I. So I'm sort of looking at my shoes and saying, oh, shucks. And that. They wanted to talk about what I thought was such a terrific book that Bell Burden had written. No, they wanted to talk about candy hearts. And they concur that they are probably made out of chalk.

[Kate Gibson]

And can I tell you how often over the last week new things have occurred to me to put on the Tums hearts. How about better out than in? I've had so, like, seriously, I've had so many, like, it's, it's, you know. Anyway, I'm just saying they, they are, I think, made by. And I think we've been handing out antacids for years in cute containers with cute sayings on them. But we're probably more healthy for it. We're more regular because of it, but we'll leave it there.

[Pete Gibson]

And somebody, Somebody. Well, these two people said, what's worse? The candy hearts at Valentine's Day or peeps at Easter, Those little gummy things that. Anyway, yeah, but.

[Kate Gibson]

But, you know, but you. But you can't blow up candy hearts in the microwave. But you can with the marshmallow peeps. They blow up and they get really obscene sizes. You can't do that with the candy hearts.

[Pete Gibson]

That's a scientific experiment. Is it?

[Kate Gibson]

Sure. It's being done all across the world. We're proving it every year.

[Pete Gibson]

Right, right. Anyway, we do welcome you. We have Allegra Goodman with us this week, who has written a new book called this Is Not About Us, and It Is about the Family, a Rubenstein family. Many generations of same families provide unending material for authors. And she has picked or has given us a really wonderful family.

[Kate Gibson]

She has. There are lots of characters in the Rubenstein family, and in some ways they fit stereotypes. There's the ne' er do well troubadour granddaughter who's going around the country playing the violin for busking money. There's the cantankerous grandmother wannabe figure. There's. Who's giving everybody unwanted advice. And yet I think this book invites you to look closer at every one of those characters, to really take a look at their insides and. And get a sense of who they are and all of their lives sort of interchange. And I want to really emphasize we don't talk about this enough in the interview. I think this book is very funny. It is hilariously funny. You will hear yourselves no matter what your family is like or the family that you've chosen for yourself. There's nothing quite like the arguments over the dinner table, and this book captures that perfectly. The love and the sort of meshuggah nuts that go into trying to be a family.

[Pete Gibson]

Well, there are family feuds, there's family disagreements, there's arguments, there's whatever. But it is all underscored by love. And I think that is so true of so many families. And she's done something in this book which I think is tremendously impressive. There's probably. I think I counted them one day. There's. I think there's 20 major characters, and that's very foreboding. Am I going to have to keep track of 20 characters? Well, she gives you a little chart, a little family tree at the beginning, but it's not a problem. It just. And I must admit to this, I have trouble sometimes following how all these characters intertwine, but I had no trouble with this because they're so distinct and they're so. They come so alive for you as you read it.

[Kate Gibson]

And she does such a nice job of capturing each of the individual voices. You don't need to be told who's speaking. It's a tremendous book and very funny, and we couldn't wait to talk to her about it. And each chapter is its own short story, I think, but it holds together beautifully as a compilation and full novel. We couldn't recommend it more highly.

[Pete Gibson]

Well, we wanted to talk to her. I'm not sure she wanted to talk to us because she had no voice. This book is just out. I think it's going to be very well received. She's been Talking a lot about it. And as a result, she's lost her voice. So she was lovely to talk to us on a Sunday morning when there was a bit of a croak in her voice. So layered. Whitman, probably. I don't know what she normally sounds like, but she didn't sound like Allegra Goodman. She just sounded very enthused about the book and lovely to talk to. So here's our conversation with Allegra Goodman. This is not about us. Allegra Goodman. It is such a treat, real treat for us to have you in the bookcase. Kate and I both love this book. Tell me about the Rubenstein family. How would you describe this family that you have so wonderfully depicted?

[Allegra Goodman]

Well, thank you so much. It's lovely to be here. I apologize for my voice. Too much talking. The Rubensteins, I would describe them as, you know, good people who are flawed, people who are funny, people who fight, who love each other and squabble and are trying to raise their children and don't listen to them. They're actually a lot like many of us. You know, I would describe them as real. That's how they seemed to me as I was writing them.

[Kate Gibson]

Is there a story that, for you, is the heart of this book? Like, is there a story that you believe is the touchstone for the book?

[Allegra Goodman]

Well, to use a different metaphor, I think of the book as like a tree. So the first story, the apple cake story, which is sort of the beginning and the nucleus of the book, it's like the trunk of the tree. And then I wrote that first, and then all the other branches sprouted from there.

[Kate Gibson]

So did you know when you wrote the apple cake, did you think, okay, these are the roots of my tree and I have to grow it from here? And did you know how you were going to grow it at the very beginning?

[Allegra Goodman]

I just wanted to explore the lives of each of the characters, each of the family members who gather in that story, and sort of take the reader with me along each branch. And I did not, at the very beginning, have an endpoint in mind, but I would say it evolved organically. I did grow it like a tree.

[Pete Gibson]

Katie and I talked as we were reading about the fact that there are wonderful little vignettes through it, which basically are. You could characterize them as short stories, but to say somebody wrote a short story book is kind of a kiss of death in terms of sales.

[Kate Gibson]

Although we love them.

[Pete Gibson]

We love them. But did you have a sense of how this was all going to come together and how you would keep it from being a book of short stories as opposed to a novel.

[Allegra Goodman]

I really think of it as a serial novel. You can read it from beginning to end like a novel, and it has a narrative arc to it. So, you know, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And so as you read each, each chapter builds on the last. And I was also publishing these stories as I went in magazines, especially the New Yorker. And so I. I really thought, think it's the closest I will come to writing a serial novel like the 19th century authors did. I even got, you know, responses from readers along the way of, you know, what happened to Lily? Or I want to hear more about Deborah, or, you know, or I needed to hear this right now. Or I even got a reader writing to me. I am Helen, so, you know, sometimes my own characters write to me. Even. So.

[Kate Gibson]

It sounds to me like when you wrote, some of the individuals of these. And I could be wrong, but we talk about authors being a plotter or a pantser. You know, they're right by the seat of their pants, or they're very carefully plot. It sounds to me like you are sort of a pantser. Is that true?

[Allegra Goodman]

I'm actually both. I write lots of outlines and notes and try to plot things out, but my plots evolve as I go. So, you know, I would describe it to me, it's like improvisation. It's like jazz improvisation. You have certain themes and certain motifs and certain narrative lines that you're working with. And then as you get into it, you start riffing on that, especially when the characters are talking to each other just as the voice is in. In jazz, you know, exchange, you know, toss melody back and forth. And so there's this tremendous improvisation. But that kind of improvisation requires a lot of preparation beforehand.

[Pete Gibson]

I'm surprised by the number of authors who have told us that their characters surprise them, that they have a sense of where something is going, and then all of a sudden, it's in a different direction. And I keep thinking, well, that character's you, darn it. So how does that happen? That's a strange phenomenon to me. Does it happen to you and does it surprise you sometimes where your characters are coming out?

[Allegra Goodman]

I mean, occasionally, but mostly I know what they're going to do. I just know, because I know the kind of people they are. It's just imagine that you know somebody in your own family, and you know exactly how they're going to respond to something because you know them. And they may surprise you at times, but underneath, there's this deep knowledge. And so it's sort of a dance between control and lack of control. I would say that's what you're probably hearing from these writers. You know, they're describing that improvisation, that. That feeling when everything is at play when you're working.

[Kate Gibson]

How did you strategically plan the whole family tree, as it were?

[Allegra Goodman]

I liked the idea of ending with a birthday, but in a way, within this larger trajectory, each of the characters has their own trajectory. Right. You know, there's the process of Richard and his wife, you know, splitting up and then finding, you know, moving on to the next chapter of their lives. That's one big plot. And, you know, their children responding to that. And there's the estrangement between the two older sisters. And they have their own rhythm as well. So, you know, all of this contributes to the larger narrative arc.

[Pete Gibson]

That's interesting. I had in mind, as I was reading it, you're talking about Richard, but Richard has two girlfriends in the book. He starts with Corinne, and then all of a sudden, Corinne is gone, and there's a new one named Heather. And I'm wondering, as I read the book, I thought, has Allegra decided there's just nothing more she can do with Corinne, and therefore, let's get rid of her and bring in a new girlfriend with a different. With a different personality? I wondered what was going through your mind when you just decided, okay, enough of her.

[Allegra Goodman]

Oh, no, I didn't decide enough of her. Keith decided, not me. He realized she was too young for him. He realized that wasn't going to work out. You know, that was his rebound girlfriend. And then we have Heather, who is quite different in his mind.

[Kate Gibson]

It's so brilliant, though, the moment that I think he. I even know the minute that he. I mean, when he takes those glasses off because his daughter doesn't like them in them, and you go, oh, Corrine's tone. Yeah, exactly.

[Pete Gibson]

Exactly.

[Kate Gibson]

I'd be interested to know, too, because there's so many different stories in this. And you titled the book this Is Not About Us, which is, I think, one of the central, again, one of my favorite chapters, the Bat Mitzvah chapter. When did you come up with that title and who suggested it? Or was it something that came organically from you?

[Allegra Goodman]

So the title for the story I came up with, and it's used a little bit differently in that chapter, you know, because Heather's just reminding him that this Bat Mitzvah is about Lily. You know, she's. Heather is showing maturity. You know, she doesn't Want their relationship to be a distraction and all that. So it hits differently as the title of the whole book out of that context of their relationship. But actually my sister suggested that I use that title from. From that chapter as the title for the whole book.

[Kate Gibson]

And why do you think it works?

[Allegra Goodman]

I like it because it plays with this idea of, you know, that in fiction you often recognize people you know, or you recognize bits of yourself. And sometimes that's uncomfortable. And we often try to deny that it hits so close to home or, you know. So I like the idea that we could say this is a book about other people. Although of course, you know, a lot of it does hit home for us.

[Kate Gibson]

I. In some ways I think that plays beautifully with the metaphor. I love Helen's chapter where it opens up with like, Helen doesn't have any grandkids, but she's not jealous. And then the next four paragraphs are about how jealous she is of everybody else's own grandkids. And I feel the same way about. This is not about us. Richard is like, this is not about me, but I'm totally obsessed with my relationship in this chapter.

[Allegra Goodman]

Of course, of course.

[Kate Gibson]

You know.

[Allegra Goodman]

Well, we don't always say what we mean. We don't always mean what we say.

[Pete Gibson]

One of the things you mentioned when we asked you about to describe the family, they're all squabbling, but it is underpinned by such obvious love. And you, without ever stating that, I think you leave that impression so. Well, in people's minds, families are dysfunctional. They can. They are all over the lot. Just take any Thanksgiving dinner or any Passover dinner or whatever. You'll find squabbles as you do in this book. And I kept thinking, Kate will love this book because she lives in Minnesota. And if there's a passive aggressive family better depicted, I don't know one other than the Rubenstein's. Did you. You've got that passive aggressive business down pretty well.

[Allegra Goodman]

Thank you. We write what we know.

[Kate Gibson]

Well, no, but I am interested too, because this is not a book that I think this is similar to families in general, but this is not a book that provides a lot of closure in the end. You don't know whether mom's going to pull her out of the dance classes. You don't know if the rifts are going to keel. You don't know. I mean, there's not a lot of buttoning up. Did you. Did you do that on purpose and.

[Pete Gibson]

You start it with a family feud? Yes, that I. This is a spoiler but it doesn't get resolved.

[Kate Gibson]

Right.

[Pete Gibson]

It's still the family Feud. And, and I, I, I, I wondered about your, your decision making to as to leave it in.

[Kate Gibson]

And selfishly, I was hoping that the reason that you left it was because there's going to be more of the Rubensteins, but I could be wrong.

[Allegra Goodman]

Well, I think that to me, again, they are real people. You know, there are no heroes or villains in this book. There's no, you know, one final, you know, fight one last battle, as it were. These are people who are very, who are alive to me and I wanted to show them as alive. And alive means that they keep growing and they keep, the children are going to get older and the, and the parents are also going to get older and they're going to change in many ways. And in many ways they're not going to change. And there's going to be no sentimental sort of tying up with a ribbon in this family. But you are so right. They love each other desperately. At the same time, to me, that's, that's what's so beautiful and so tragic and so funny, you know, about all of us. You know, I give it over to the reader. I, I think I may have said what I have to say about these people. However, as I mentioned to you, they write to me all the time. So, so even if I stop writing about these characters, my characters will write to me. And so I'm still in touch.

[Kate Gibson]

Fair enough. Allegra Goodman, thank you so much for sitting with us this morning with your failing voice and all. This is not about us. It's really a pleasure to read. This was one I really enjoyed picking up. Thank you so much. And when we come back, we'll have some rapid fire questions for Allegra Goodman.

[Pete Gibson]

From 30 for 30 podcasts.

[Allegra Goodman]

Did you say someone got shot?

[Pete Gibson]

Brian Pata, senior defensive lineman from Miami, gunned down the key to this case. It's Brian. An hour before he died, he was on the phone arguing with somebody.

[Allegra Goodman]

This might be a hit.

[Pete Gibson]

You want the truth? They just want a conviction. Being placed under arrest. We had a killer amongst us. Murder at the U. Listen, now we're lost. I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions.

[Kate Gibson]

Hi there.

[Allegra Goodman]

We're looking to get to the campground.

[Pete Gibson]

Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree end of this here road. No, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.

[Allegra Goodman]

How are you getting a signal out here?

[Pete Gibson]

T Mobile and US Cellular decided to merge, so the network out here is huge. Getting the same great signal as the city and saving a boatload with all the benefits. Oh, and a five year price guarantee. Okay, here's those directions.

[Allegra Goodman]

Actually, can you point us in the.

[Kate Gibson]

Direction of a T Mobile store?

[Pete Gibson]

America's best network just got bigger.

[Kate Gibson]

Switch to T Mobile today and get.

[Pete Gibson]

Built in benefits the other guys leave out plus our five year price guarantee. And now T Mobile is available in US Cellular store.

[Kate Gibson]

Best mobile network based on analysis by Oogle of Speed test intelligence data at 2H 2025. Bigger network the combination of T Mobile's and US Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage price guarantee on talk, text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See t mobile.com for details. Allegra Goodman, Rapid Fire Questions for you three authors that you will read just because they wrote it.

[Allegra Goodman]

Kazuo Ishiguro. Tolstoy. Who else? Who else? Oh, a third one. I'm trying to think of somebody contemporary.

[Pete Gibson]

Gishen Tolstoy hasn't come out with a book in a long time.

[Kate Gibson]

I was about to say, Tolstoy, you do, but I can exhaust the catalog.

[Allegra Goodman]

He wrote a lot.

[Pete Gibson]

He did write a lot, but he's not, I don't know what, he's lost his writer's block or something.

[Kate Gibson]

I'm not sure.

[Pete Gibson]

Was there something in your life, be it a book or some sort of trigger, that made you think, I can be a writer?

[Allegra Goodman]

I wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl, but when I knew I could be a writer, I was writing a story, my first sort of really serious story when I was 17. And I got to a point in this story, which was about a man who was an orthodox Jew who did not believe in God. And I was describing this man and I said, he did not believe in God, although he was an observant Jew. But he enjoyed that contradiction and he nurtured it. And I just stopped there and I said, oh my gosh, that is something fiction can do. That's something I can do. That you can write about people having these contradictions that don't make sense and that can be part of a character. And I knew then that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

[Kate Gibson]

Book you have read most often?

[Allegra Goodman]

Oh gosh. Well, adult book that I've read most often is probably Middlemarch. I've read that many, many times. Moby Dick is up there, too. I read it every few years as a child. I was obsessed with the Oz books and I probably read Dorothy and the wizard of oz, you know, 30 times.

[Kate Gibson]

Best piece of advice you've ever received about writing?

[Allegra Goodman]

The best piece of advice came from my grandmother, and she said, don't talk about your work while you're doing it. Just write it and talk about it after you're done with it. And I have learned over the years that I do better to work in silence and wait until something is fully developed and then discuss or show it. It's really good to protect your work when it's a young seedling, you know.

[Pete Gibson]

So you're not part of any writers group that you're sharing what you're doing. So how do you know it's good?

[Allegra Goodman]

I don't completely. I. I have a sense in my, you know, within myself, whether something works. And I. As I've gotten older and more experienced, I'm. I have a better sense of how things are working. But I will send it to my agent, and she will. She's pretty ruthless. Like, lovely, but ruthless. So she would. If something really wasn't working, she would tell me.

[Kate Gibson]

I was gonna ask you. I was gonna have my last rapid fire question be, when you finish a book, how do you celebrate? But maybe it's that you walk out of your writer's room and go, I can talk about it now.

[Allegra Goodman]

How do I celebrate? I would take a walk if it was really. If I was feeling really good, I might go get an ice cream cone in Harvard Square.

[Pete Gibson]

So when you see Allegra Goodman down in Harvard Square, if you're in Cambridge buying an ice cream cone, you'll notice she's just finished another book. And that's always a cause for celebration.

[Kate Gibson]

There's one other thing I want to say about this book, which is it gave me a new respect for endings. Because, you know, when you write a novel with a singular story or many stories, you still really only have to stick one landing. And There are like, 17 chapters in this book, and there's sort of the 17 individual stories. She sticks every landing. Like, every time I finished a chapter, I thought to myself, yep, that's exactly how that should have ended. And I just think that's an incredible skill.

[Pete Gibson]

Yeah. She was very coy about when you asked her if there'd be more of the Rubenstein family in the future. And I still don't know whether she said yes or no.

[Kate Gibson]

Yeah, she was good at that.

[Pete Gibson]

Yeah. Yep. Again, the book is. This is not about us. We have a bookstore for you this week. It is. Well, two bookstores, actually, and they are as we will tell you, very well named. This is the. The best bookstore in Palm Springs. The best bookstore in San Francisco's Union Square. I think that's really inventive names for bookstores. And the owner is Sarah Lacey, who along with her, her husband has opened these two bookstores. And she has a very interesting background. She's a journalist, as a background. And it was somewhat controversial as to what happened to her journalistic career. She got a lot of people in Silicon Valley angry, and so they decided to heck with it. Let's go. Let's go open some bookstores. And they've been very successful. Sarah Lacy, the Best Bookstore in Palm Springs and the Best Bookstore on Union Square.

[Kate Gibson]

Sarah Lacey, owner of two bookstores. And I'm going to let you tell our folks at home what the bookstores are named, because my father and I agree they are the best named bookstores in the history of bookstores. So what are they?

[Sarah Lacy]

The Best Bookstore. We are the Best Bookstore Corp. Now that we are a massive chain of two stores. So we have the best Bookstore in Palm Springs and the Best Bookstore in Union Square. And we have to be very careful to say it's the best bookstore in Union Square because there's a lot of good bookstores in San Francisco. And we only claim to be the best bookstore in Union Square, not all of San Francisco. We were living in Palm Springs for a couple of years and we realized that there was no bookstore in Palm Springs. And we kept looking around and we were like, there's got to be a bookstore somewhere. Like, is there one in Indio? Is there one in Palm Desert? In the entire Coachella Valley, no bookstore. Like none. Not a used bookstore, nothing. And we kept being like, this is madness. Someone's got to open a bookstore. And like, you know the saying, it's like if you're looking around and you don't see the sucker, it's you. And so we were like, okay, we had, you know, a startup that was venture backed we were doing at the time. And we were like, well, let's, let's do this. It'll be a business we can do with our kids. Maybe it'll break even. And you know what? The bookstore did better than our startup. The startup went under. But the bookstore had like a million dollars in revenue the first year. And we were like, who knew? Who knew Book the doors. So we opened. So we decided to call it the Best Bookstore in Palm Springs because there was no other bookstore in Palm Springs. And so we thought, we'll never open one in San Francisco, because there's. This is the city of great independent bookstores. And not only that, every neighborhood has one. And I was walking around downtown, and I was first of all, like, well, downtown is back. Union Square is back. Union Square is lovely. It's back. It's wonderful. Mayor Daniel Lurie is not lying with his Instagrams. It's incredible. There was nothing here. And we were like, this is madness.

[Kate Gibson]

This is.

[Sarah Lacy]

You know, call Mary Poppins. She's coming in with the umbrella and 10,000 books. So we had to open the best bookstore in Union Square. When we did it in Palm Springs, we had the. I mean, we're insane. We had the idea on. In August, and we opened on Black Friday. Like, the idea raised funding. We pulled money out of our house. This is. No one should do this. We got a second mortgage to open a bookstore. Thank God it did well. So we. We did this. We found a spot. We opened on Black Friday. We're like, shelving 10,000 books. This time idea in September, opened on Black Friday, and this spot is 2 1/2 times bigger. Don't know how we did it still.

[Kate Gibson]

What was your what the hell am I doing?

[Sarah Lacy]

Moment?

[Kate Gibson]

Because every bookstore owner, before they opened the bookstore has a what the hell am I doing? Moment. And so I was just wondering what yours were. Or did you have any.

[Sarah Lacy]

I don't think we had one, to be honest with you. But, like, you know, this is where we're probably different than most bookstore owners that you've talked to, because Paul and I were already entrepreneurs, and we had already done several startups, and in fact, we had done a media startup. And so, like, I mean, and people are always like, wow, bookstores are a hard business. And we're like, are they, like, once you've tried to do investigative journalism and make the workplace more equitable for women, selling books is pretty easy. Like. Like, this is a pretty easy business, comparatively. You've got product, market fit. People come in, they want a book, you sell them the book. Like, compared to other businesses we tried to build, Like, I mean. And, you know, when you're a journalist, like, I mean, I used to always tell the team, like, our job is to piss off about 15% of our audience every day, and we should just rotate that around. And we probably overperformed on that covering Silicon Valley. And so it's like, you know, people walk in and they actually like us with this job. I mean, it is. It's remarkable. I mean, like, I don't think we had that because it's so interesting. We just approached this like a startup and so it didn't seem that risky comparatively when. And in the Palm Springs store, Palm Springs was such a fascinating market to figure out book selling because it's only 40,000 people live there, but 10 million people come through there to read by a pool. So you get this constant focus group of like, what do you do? And you know, how do you sell books and how do you think about it? And we just felt like there's really not been innovation in book selling in so long. And we kind of came up with, you know, what we think is a pretty different in store experience. It's very hospitality driven, but it's also like very profitable. We have 3x the sales per square foot of an average bookstore. We have 2x the revenue per employee of an average bookstore. And so we have really profitable, hospitality driven bookstores that are really like, you know, when you walk into most bookstores, like, no one greets you and there's like an angry Gen X person with a cat. They're quiet. Like, our bookstore is the opposite of that. Our bookstore is like, you've walked in, like, you walk in, it's colorful and someone goes, hey, guys. Like, it is very. It's like you've walked into a cocktail party with someone who loves books.

[Kate Gibson]

What kind of a reader are you? Do you read more fiction or nonfiction?

[Sarah Lacy]

You know, the bane of bookseller existence are these like crates of galleys that you get. And it's like, talk about Sisyphus. It is a boulder in your face every time you come to work. It's like boxes and boxes and boxes of the galleys. Like 7,000 books come out every Tuesday. And it's just like, you can't keep up, right? And so I've like developed my own weird system for going through them because there's so many brilliant books that just go through your fingers. And it's a debut author, it doesn't hit for whatever reason. And like that's that person's dreams gone, you know, and it could be the best book that none of us have ever seen. So I like go through and I like look at every cover. And it's like if the COVID remotely grabs me, I'll put it in this pile, if not this one, and then I'll read the first 30 pages of everything in this pile. And it's like, I'm looking for a reason to put this down, to like make this pile go down. And so if, if the first 30 pages, I cannot put this down. Like, I know this book is a winner. And I have discovered so many books that never caught that no other bookstore has, have been like, Sarah table mainstays. And like, that's what people come to us for is like, what is the book I'm going to pick up here that no other bookstore has on a table that I can then go to a cocktail party and sound like the coolest person because I have this book no one else has. And it's usually fiction and it's usually a debut author and it's usually something that just slipped through the cracks of everyone else. There's, you know, we have a thousand square foot store in a tiny, small town and when we look at the, the numbers, we are often the store that sells more copies than any other store of certain authors.

[Pete Gibson]

If there were a Sarah Lacey doll, you wind it up and it gets you excited about books and about owning a bookstore. What a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

[Kate Gibson]

I love bookstore owners. They're all so passionate about what they do. It's really one of the highlights of every week, talking to them.

[Pete Gibson]

Well, and she says we've been so successful in that we have, what, twice the profit of a normal square foot in bookstores. Normal bookstores. And three times the profit per employee. I think she said that's very impressive. So if someone's thinking about opening a bookstore, they ought to go out and talk to Sarah Lacy and her husband Paul.

[Kate Gibson]

Heck yeah. And way to go Union Square and way to go Palm Springs. Thank you very much.

[Pete Gibson]

So anyway, we'll bring you up to date on. Well, we won't bring you up to date. It's the same people who make this podcast possible every week. Breaking news, we'll remind you who they are. And then Allegra Goodman. The book is this is not about us, but her coda was about us and we really appreciate it. She was very kind. So stay tuned for that and we'll see you next week.

[Kate Gibson]

The Bookcase with Pete and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, Arielle Chester at Good Morning America, and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Follow the Bookcase wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to listen, rate and and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode, we have them linked in the episode description.

[Allegra Goodman]

My final thought is I'd love to come speak to you again when my voice is working. I also love that the two of you are doing this together. As a father, daughter, I think that is so wonderful that you have this project going on and you know that is also family. You can collaborate with your kids. And as somebody who now has four grown kids, they're like my favorite people. So I love that you guys are doing this. That's my coda.