Pineapple Street, Jenny Jackson
July 2023
Popular culture about wealthy New Yorkers would have us believe there isn’t a cent to be found past the Brooklyn Bridge, but the gilded Brownstones of Pineapple Street dynamite that assumption with their property trust funds, yachts, tennis clubs and old money galas.
This debut from Jenny Jackson, already a hugely significant editor (Emily St John Mandel, Katherine Heiny, Kevin Kwan) is part family melodrama, part roaring satire, and a wholly satisfying read and romp about the struggles a new generation faces when it comes up close and personal with tremendous wealth in changing times.
Great novels always have motifs or markers that pull the cast together and the story along, and I love how Pineapple Street uses the importance of a tennis game for the Stockton family to keep their sanity and social standing on track. As ever, there is so much to hate about extreme wealth, but it’s nigh-on impossible to look away when given a front row seat.
I heard Jackson say in a podcast that the first novel she wrote, in lockdown, was unpublishable because it was so obvious who her characters were based on. If she knows where all the Brooklyn Heights bodies are buried, I really want to hear more about all of them! If you loved Fleishman, this is for you.