51 pages • 1 hour read
Kate GoldbeckYou, Again
Kate GoldbeckFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Parts 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “2014” - Part 3: “Two Years Later”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Arianna “Ari” Sloane is canvassing for an environmental charity in New York City, a job that she took after her friend Gabe told her that she could make money and practice the improv skills she needs for her desired career as a comedian. A man rudely brushes her off.
She heads to her apartment, where she meets Gabe for casual sex while her roommate, Natalie, is out for the evening. They are surprised when the apartment buzzer rings; she lets in the rude man from earlier, who does not recognize her. He introduces himself as Natalie’s boyfriend, Josh Kestenberg, but Ari is insistent that Natalie doesn’t have a boyfriend. Josh is irritated, as he has bought expensive groceries to show off his skills as a chef.
Ari is delighted as she demands that Josh donate to the environmental charity in exchange for letting him into the apartment. They banter about the danger of Ari letting a stranger into her apartment, but the tone is hostile rather than playful. Ari disputes the seriousness of Josh and Natalie’s relationship, which makes Josh feel insecure, though he tries to hide it. He is shocked when he sees a shirtless Gabe quickly leave the apartment.
When Josh reluctantly lets Ari try using his expensive chef’s cleaver, he feels a reluctant attraction to her. Ari privately reflects on why Natalie, with whom she has had sex, likes Josh more than Ari. They tersely discuss their differing opinions on relationships; Josh wants a committed, long-term relationship, while Ari considers monogamy a “patriarchal myth.” He cites Plato’s Symposium to defend his faith in the concept of soulmates. He implies disapproval of Ari’s multiple casual sex partners.
Their conversation reveals that Josh’s father owns Brodsky’s, a famous New York deli, which Josh considers lowbrow. Though the family business led to Josh’s love for cooking, his attitude toward the deli has caused a rift with his father.
Josh gets frustrated when Natalie texts that she will be later than anticipated, as his meal will be ruined by the time she arrives. He and Ari continue to heatedly debate their opposing viewpoints on relationships. In a moment of anger, Ari explains her sexual past with Natalie. Ari plans to leave before Natalie arrives, which Josh claims is cowardice and insecurity, something that Ari privately admits resonates with her. She storms out.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary
Ari waits outside Scodella, the fancy restaurant where her best friend and roommate, Radhya, works. She is eager to tell Radhya about the offer she’s received to write a script for a comedy-focused streaming service called KWPS. Ari hopes that this offer will help her feel more legitimate in the comedy scene. Radhya urges her to come inside where, unbeknownst to Ari, Radhya works for Josh.
Josh admires the success of a new dish that he is making, thinking of how his father, Danny, has refused to eat at his restaurant. Josh and Radhya debate over the right time to cook duck and Josh’s insistence that she use the respectful term “chef” when addressing him. Since Josh was promoted ahead of Radhya, despite starting at Scodella after her, he attributes her attitude to “resentment. Spite. Jealousy” (44).
Josh anxiously checks his phone for an answer from his girlfriend, Sophie, who responded tepidly to his declaration of love. He speaks to a food critic before loud laughter from the bar distracts him. He recognizes Ari, who is flirting with Jace, the bartender. Ari pretends not to recognize him at first. She declares herself a “professional comedian,” and Josh brags about his girlfriend, only to be distracted when the duck emerges from the kitchen undercooked.
He storms into the kitchen and shouts at Radhya about the duck; she insists that she followed his instructions that the meat cook for eight minutes instead of 10, as she suggested. Josh, heated, calls Radhya incompetent; she claims that he got his job due to nepotism. He fires her. Radhya meets Ari at the bar; Ari defends Radhya, and Josh dismisses her. Ari throws a drink in his face and leaves.
Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary
Josh is irritated to be spending New Year’s Eve at a party with his younger sister, Briar, instead of having dinner with Sophie, who stayed in Vancouver for the holiday, or cooking a new recipe. He desires quiet time after several months of “reimagining” Brodsky’s in the wake of his father’s sudden death several months prior. Josh plans to reopen the deli as “The Brod,” a high-dining restaurant. Briar demanded that he attend the party with her after he missed several previous celebrations.
Josh is uninterested in the party, instead thinking of the explicit gift he sent Sophie to help keep their sex lives active during their long-distance relationship. Briar, however, is entranced by her academic advisor, Cass Nichols, who, Josh soon learns, is married to Ari. Josh finds Cass pretentious and sees her hosting a holiday party for her students as a transparent bid for attention.
Josh is shocked to see Ari, who is high on Molly. Ari regrets missing Gabe’s annual karaoke fundraiser, which she always attends on New Year’s Eve. Ari’s career stagnated after KWPS folded, and she left a cruise ship job, which she did with Gabe, because Cass disliked her long absences.
Josh is jealous of the physical intimacy between Ari and Cass, which he feels is lacking in his relationship with Sophie. Josh quickly tires of the party. He slips to a spare room and tries to call Sophie, but she doesn’t answer. He leaves a sexually explicit message, which Ari overhears. They discuss Radhya; she has another job at a promising restaurant, but Ari comments that Radhya would be as successful as Josh if Radhya had Josh’s family advantages.
He comments on her “complete ideological U-turn toward monogamy” (72); she suggests that she and Cass are not monogamous. He is annoyed to find that he still notices Ari’s attractiveness. Josh explains that the phone call was part of his attempt to keep his long-distance relationship sexual. Ari thinks about the “trade-off[s]” of her relationship with Cass, such as entertaining Cass’s esoteric interests.
Josh insists on his confidence in his relationship with Sophie, though he privately is less certain. Ari explains how she and Cass met during Cass’s divorce. They overhear a countdown to the new year, but Josh doesn’t move to call Sophie, and Ari doesn’t go to join Cass, seeming alarmed at the idea that they may be together for another 60 years.
Parts 1-3 Analysis
Parts 1-3 of the novel, each only a chapter long, document three days, each years apart, in which Josh and Ari encounter one another by chance. These encounters are fraught; the first two are openly hostile. Goldbeck thus plays, in these parts, with the romantic comedy notion of the meet-cute, in which characters first meet in unlikely or humorous circumstances. By having Josh and Ari meet again and again, she portrays different types of these encounters, thus building a backstory for the characters that will come into play during their friendship, as documented in Part 4. When Ari and Josh become friends, they do not do so only with their recent interactions in mind but also with long-held preconceived notions about one another; this establishes expectations that they must overcome.
The eight years that pass between when Ari and Josh first meet and when they become friends introduce the theme of The Significance of Timing in Relationships. Goldbeck only labels Part 1 with a specific year; she labels the other parts using relative time, each a certain number of months or years after the previous action. The narrative effect of this timing is that the many years before Josh and Ari become friends seem short, while the time they spend apart (both before and after their friendship) is longer. This allows Goldbeck to emphasize long histories between, for example, Ari and Radhya while also highlighting that the bulk of Ari’s development happens in the year that she spends time with Josh. In effect, the way that Goldbeck presents these timelines illustrates which characters change one another and under which contexts.
In Chapter 1, Josh and Ari debate (with increasing hostility) their respective positions on relationships and sex. The novel does not present either Ari’s desire for casual sexual partners or Josh’s desire for a committed, monogamous partner to be “good” or “bad”; neither perspective is necessarily framed as better than the other. As their debate grows more heated, however, both characters lean on cultural stereotypes about the other’s perspective. Josh indicates a sex-negative attitude known as “slut shaming,” in which he implies disapproval for Ari’s preferences. He frames her choices as shallow and insecure. Ari, meanwhile, frames Josh’s desire to have a soulmate as naive and foolish. Ultimately, the novel presents each character’s broader argument as having merit while disregarding the insulting aspects of Josh’s and Ari’s respective perspectives. While Ari does pursue casual sexual encounters to maintain emotional distance, her long-term friendship with Gabe (and their intermittent sexual relationship) indicates that this is not necessarily the case, as Josh frames it. Meanwhile, Josh’s desire for a monogamous partner is not seen as foolish, though the author characterizes his early conviction that this connection will arise due to what “looks right” as self-sabotaging. Even so, their heated presentation of their conflicting viewpoints creates the early animosity between them.
In contrast, how Josh and Ari interact in Chapter 3 reveals them to be more similar than dissimilar despite their surface-level differences and disagreements. The confidence with which each of them describes their relationship—Josh’s with Sophie, his long-distance girlfriend, and Ari’s with Cass, her then-wife—belies the insecurity in these connections. This insecurity is obvious to the other character. This introduces the way that Josh and Ari, despite their miscommunications and arguments in the first parts of the novel, can see one another accurately. This is something that becomes important in their later friendship and ultimately romantic relationship, foreshadowing the theme of The Rarity and Value of Friendship Over Romance, which will develop throughout the novel. In this section, Goldbeck emphasizes that one’s “true self” (as opposed to surface qualities, like Ari’s penchant for messiness and crude jokes or Josh’s desire for order and neatness), which the text continually frames, is the central element in building relationships that last.
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