Worry

Set in Brooklyn in 2019, the novel is narrated by Jules, an editor at BookSmarts, an online study-guide company, who lives alone in a rent-stabilized apartment in a building that was once a Jewish hospital. Her younger sister Poppy arrives on a wet Thursday, covered in hives from a chronic skin condition that has affected her since puberty, claiming she is moving to New York. Jules is skeptical. Only she knows that not long ago, Poppy tried to kill herself by crashing her car into a guardrail on the Florida Turnpike. Jules interprets Poppy's move as a hopeful sign but dreads the disruption to her solitary life.

The sisters grew up in South Florida in a Jewish family. Their mother, Wendy, a reform Jew, has recently joined a messianic congregation, a movement blending Jewish practice with belief in Jesus, and begun selling essential oils through a multilevel marketing company called WayLife. Jules maintains a secret Instagram account devoted to following religious mommy bloggers whose content she finds repellent yet compelling. She tells herself she is researching a project about femininity and image-centric platforms, but when she applies for a writing grant and sits down to work, nothing comes. She admits the project was never real.

Poppy's apartment hunt yields only absurd listings, and she remains on a deflating air mattress in Jules's apartment for over a month. The sisters fight constantly, cycling between petty grievances and deep wounds about dependence and identity. Jules resents Poppy's presence but also needs it; Poppy wants autonomy but clings to Jules as the one person who knows her fully.

Jules is dating Jon, a poet with half a PhD who still lives with his ex-girlfriend. When Jon meets Poppy, they bond easily over literature, making Jules feel excluded. Jules tells Jon about Poppy's suicide attempt, partly to elicit his concern. The tactic fails; the next morning, Jon says he is not ready for a relationship. After the breakup, Poppy gives Jules a stimulant pill from a law-student friend. They take the pills with weed gummies and spend a manic, exhilarating night scrubbing the kitchen floor, beginning a sitcom script about their lives, and ordering things online. Jules wakes to find her overdue work completed and an expensive party dress on order.

Jules is reprimanded at BookSmarts for failing to fact-check a study guide and takes a new job at Starlab, a trendy astrology app, writing horoscopes. She uses Poppy as the basis for her Scorpio descriptions. The company lurches between editorial pivots, and Jules hates commuting and office culture.

Poppy eventually reveals why she left Florida: Wendy asked if Poppy was a lesbian, then launched into a conspiracy theory about the "deep state" using liberal media to stop Jewish women from reproducing, using a Yiddish slur in the process. Poppy was not chasing aspiration; she was fleeing hostility. Jules has a minor surgery to remove a uterine polyp, and while sedated, she orders Poppy an expensive twin mattress and pink four-poster bed frame totaling over $2,600. When the bed arrives, Jules tells Poppy she should stay for the year. Poppy agrees hesitantly. The bed remains unassembled against the wall.

Poppy gets a job at a private school and bonds with a small boy who comes to her guidance office daily wanting to eat lunch with her. When the sisters argue about motherhood, Jules says neither of them would be good mothers. Poppy's hives flare severely, forcing her onto high-dose steroids that cause puffiness and emotional volatility. One evening Jules finds Poppy facedown and unresponsive on the air mattress, knocked out by the combined effect of her medications. Jules shakes her, convinced she is dead, before Poppy gasps awake.

Then Jules comes home one day to find Amy Klobuchar, a three-legged corgi-Jindo mix Poppy found on Petfinder, already in the apartment. Poppy has adopted her, left the school, and taken a writing job at BookSmarts, replacing Jules. Jules is furious but breaks down crying, recognizing her own emptiness. The dog transforms their routines: early walks, a trainer, evenings watching Amy play. Despite training, Amy remains fearful, mastering only one trick: playing dead when shot with finger guns.

For Poppy's birthday, the sisters smuggle Amy onto the Staten Island Ferry to search for their great-grandparents' graves in a Jewish cemetery. They fail to find them. As they leave, Poppy delivers an emotional accusation: Jules hides behind irony, screenshots everything to mock it, and is addicted to the Internet in a way that is making Poppy ill. She walks away, leaving Jules alone among the graves.

At Thanksgiving in Florida, the family's fractures surface fully. Their mother's house plays Christmas music and is stocked with WayLife products. At their father's dermatology office, Jules receives lip filler and cheek injections while Wendy undergoes a cosmetic laser procedure. At dinner, their cousin David's wife Allyson espouses conspiracy theories about George Soros and child-trafficking cabals. Poppy calls Allyson a Nazi. The dinner collapses: Poppy reveals her suicide attempt, and Wendy tells Poppy she is "the disappointment of my life."

Back in Brooklyn, Jules spots two acquaintances she knows as the Leighs asleep together on the morning train, their legs entwined. The sight triggers a realization: Poppy has not been holding Jules back; Jules is the one trapping Poppy in her own inertia. She goes home and assembles the pink four-poster bed. When Poppy returns, however, she texts Jules that she would have preferred the money, a response that undercuts the gesture and reinforces the ambivalence between them.

Near the end of the year, Poppy tells Jules about getting her scarf caught in a closing subway door but choosing to step back from the train. She declares that she does not want to die: "I'm free. I like myself. I can take care of myself. I don't want to compromise myself or slight myself or get rid of myself. I'm new." This moment addresses the sustained tension around Poppy's well-being that runs through the entire novel.

Jules is laid off from Starlab on the Friday before Christmas. She briefly accepts a contract position at BookSmarts, then quits the same day. She calls her father for financial help; her mother seizes the phone and screams at her. Poppy decides they should spend the holidays in Montauk. They exchange Hanukkah gifts: Poppy gives Jules a commissioned drawing of their apartment building from the early 1900s; Jules gives Poppy a modern retelling of Little Women, bought last-minute. They fight again about whether to keep living together. Jules tells Poppy she is "in the way," then tries to take it back.

In the novel's final scene, on a walk along the beach, they find a jawbone in the sand. A man approaches with a golden retriever. The dogs sniff each other; Amy bites the retriever first, and the retriever retaliates, seizing Amy by the throat. Amy is bloodied and runs up the dunes. Poppy goes after her. Jules stays on the beach, scrolling her secret Instagram. The ocean washes the jawbone back to her feet. A figure approaches from far down the shore, waving. Jules cannot tell if it is Poppy, the man, or a stranger. She has seen them, and it is too late to pretend otherwise.