Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
Published by Pamela Dorman Books
Publication date: March 7, 2023
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Vacation Reading
Bookshop
The Stocktons are a family of inherited wealth, the kind whose trust funds have trust funds. Cord works with their father at the family’s real estate investment firm, but beyond that jobs are not anything his sisters Georgina and Darley have ever given thought to. Money or more importantly the lack of money is not a concept understood in Jenny Jackson’s debut, Pineapple Street.
This is innocuous reading provided you aren’t triggered by obscenely wealthy people complaining about their troubles. Jackson tries to curtail outright revulsion on the part of readers by providing Darley with a Korean husband and Cord with a middleclass wife, Sasha, whom his sisters call GD (for Gold Digger). From that set-up the plot froths up over an affair with a married man and the fact that Sasha doesn’t appreciate Cord’s parents giving them their massive home in Manhattan—with all of its historically and sentimentally significant furniture and artifacts, none of which can be touched.
Jackson is brave to choose this premise and these characters for a debut because while they may not be dislikable they’re completely impossible to connect with. What saves the novel is Jackson’s writing (always a good sign) as found in the conversations between siblings and friends. The money is stripped away leaving the high-level snark accompanied by the closeness found amongst people who have known each other for decades. This banter/dialogue is relatable and serves to make Pineapple Street more amusing than annoying.
Beyond that, even the growth and realization by one of the siblings that their level of inherited wealth has afforded them unparalleled privilege and is morally questionable is not enough to render this family’s travails as anything but trivial. I say this not as a criticism, because I’m a huge fan of novels about wealthy people behaving badly, but expecting anything more than mild entertainment from Pineapple Street would be a mistake.
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I felt similarly. It wasn’t bad, but I did wish I had those hours back.
I would have felt the same if I would have been doing something more productive with them, but we both know I would still have been sitting around.
I wanted to read this when it came out but the desire has waned since then… I might give it a pass for now. I can always come back to it – the beauty of the library!
Definitely a library book and something to read when you’re bored. Almost a skim read or vacation book, but I think the author and publisher wanted it to have more impact.