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.
Symbols & Motifs
Brodsky’s
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
The Brodsky’s restaurant and the building in which it once stood are symbolic of Josh’s growth as an individual and his relationship with his father. When Josh tries to turn Brodsky’s into The Brod after Danny’s death, he does so out of a desire to separate his identity from his family history, something that is intertwined with his dislike of seeing his privilege as a factor in his life. Josh, early in the text, believes that following any part of his father’s guidance means wholesale giving up his identity as being due to his father. He feels that he must entirely reject anything to do with Brodsky’s to be his own person.
After Danny dies and The Brod fails, Brodsky’s becomes a symbol to Josh of his perceived failure. He despises the building and insists that he wishes to sell it, though he continually drags his feet when it comes to securing a buyer. It is only when Josh can remake Brodsky’s into something somewhat, but not entirely, new—Shaak + Schmaltz, his pop-up restaurant with Radhya—that he can embrace that his past and his father’s legacy are part of him but not the whole of him. It is only with this acceptance that Josh can find peace in his professional role.
New Year’s Eve
New Year’s Eve is a recurring motif in You, Again that supports The Significance of Timing in Relationships. Josh and Ari meet on three different New Year’s Eves. The first is when Josh goes to a party at Ari and Cass’s apartment and he and Ari have their first non-confrontational conversation. The second is when Ari accompanies Josh to the gala, memorializing his father, after which they kiss for the first time. The third is when Ari runs to Josh in the novel’s climax to admit her love for him. The repeated appearance of his holiday speaks to new beginnings, a common representation of the holiday. At each instance of the holiday, Josh and Ari’s relationship grows and develops, bringing them closer together. The repetition, however, also indicates that growth is an ongoing project. While Ari balks on the novel’s first New Year’s Eve at the idea that she will have 60 more years with Cass, she finds the same idea reassuring about Josh. This suggests that the two will continue to grow together after the novel’s ending.
Black-and-White Cookies
Black-and-white cookies, which Josh cites in Chapter 1 as a New York staple, appear at various points in the novel. Josh first references them in relation to his discussion of Aristotle’s theory of soulmates (in which the gods separate too-powerful partners, leaving them eternally seeking their other halves), which he indicates as the origin story for the New York deli classic dessert. He comments immediately after, however, that he finds the cookies too simple and sweet for his taste.
This reference symbolizes Josh’s view on relationships; though he likes the idea of soulmates, he finds picture-perfect relationships (such as the one he has with Sophie) unsatisfying. When compared with his ultimate romance with Ari, these partnerships are too simple and too sweet for his preferences, no matter what he insists he wants. His dislike of the cookies’ simplicity is, moreover, tied to his desire to distance himself professionally from his father. At the beginning of the novel, Josh does so by clinging to the cultural capital he sees as connected to haute cuisine (rather than the “everyman” food served at Brodsky’s). Disliking sweet cookies lets Josh mentally set himself apart from his father; although he has privilege as the heir to Brodsky’s, Josh continually attempts to distance himself from the deli as he grapples with The Cost and Benefit of Following Professional Dreams. Part of Josh’s arc of healing his relationship with food, cooking, and his memory of his father comes when he makes chai-infused black-and-white cookies for Radhya’s restaurant. The combination of his elevated flavor profile with the classic cookie (which he has prepared in Brodsky’s kitchen) shows how Josh has learned to reconcile his preferences as a chef with his family’s history rather than aggressively rebelling against it. Additionally, the cookies highlight the novel’s attention to the specificity of New York City culture, as it highlights the dessert as a cultural icon—or, as Ari and Josh put it in their repeated refrain, “basic cultural literacy”—of the city and its culinary history.
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