Pineapple Street
A Novel
-
-
4.0 • 707 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick
“A vibrant and hilarious debut…Pineapple Street is riveting, timely, hugely entertaining and brimming with truth.” —Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest
“A delicious new Gilded Age family drama… a guilty pleasure that also feels like a sociological text.” —Vogue
A deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class, this zeitgeisty novel follows three women in one wealthy Brooklyn clan
Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process; Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family, and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider; and Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t have, and must decide what kind of person she wants to be.
Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, loveable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In Jenny Jackson’s breezy debut novel, the Stocktons own Brooklyn—both figuratively and, thanks to their ever-expanding real estate business, increasingly literally. Eldest daughter Darley signed away her inheritance when she married her devoted banker husband without a prenup. Middle-class New Englander Sasha did sign the prenup when she married heir to the throne Cord, but the family still calls her “the gold digger.” And despite being in her mid-twenties, Georgiana is still coddled, which doesn’t help when her first major romance blows up in her face. Author Jenny Jackson makes the entire family seem likable and relatable despite their extreme wealth and many personal flaws—especially a family-wide avoidance of conflict that means the inevitable dramas erupt even bigger. Part Edith Wharton, part Crazy Rich Asians, Pineapple Street is a family character study that’s both fun and thoughtful.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jackson's clever if tepid debut chronicles the struggles of three women born or married into an old-monied New York City family. Cord Stockton, the family's middle child, marries Sasha, and the couple takes over the family's Brooklyn Heights house. Sasha, who comes from a middle-class Rhode Island family, is referred to as "the GD" (gold digger) by Cord's sisters. Darley Stockton, the oldest, gives up her banking career to be a full-time mom. Georgiana, the youngest, is mainly a directionless party girl with a gig at a nonprofit, where she's sleeping with her married boss. Tensions come to a head as Darley's and Georgiana's fortunes shift and Sasha decides to beat it for Rhode Island. Unfortunately, most of the characters aside from Sasha are underdeveloped (Stockton matriarch Tilda delivers predictably cartoonish lines, like "Sasha, would you like to tell us what it was like growing up poor?"), though Jackson shines in her incisive observations about the ravages of contemporary real estate developments (at the former Hotel St. George, "ghosts of the original remained, the green balconies that once overlooked the swimming pool... now home to a series of elliptical machines where old people and college students climbed to nowhere"). Despite the dusty feeling, this has its moments.
Customer Reviews
Beautiful Self Discovery
The whole story was an inside look at the dynamics of a generationally old monied family. There really wasn’t a plot except that circumstances caused several characters to reflect on who they are and why they are that way. Once they did that, the book was simply over. I loved the characters and hoped for more, but once they each figured out what their own hang up was, they were a new person. You didn’t see their relationships grow after that. There could have been so much more.
Pass
Do not spend money on this waste of time book. Boring and pointless
Taken nowhere
Didn’t care for any of the characters, therefore it brought me nowhere.