Pineapple Street: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel) (Large Print / Paperback)
Staff Reviews
Ever since Edith Wharton, great novelists have been writing about the vagaries of life among the moneyed classes of New York. But it’s always Manhattan. Surely there’s a novel about old Brooklyn money? Indeed, there is, and what a delicious tale Pineapple Street is! The three Stockton siblings have more money than most of us can imagine, but that doesn’t mean they make better decisions than the rest of us. Darley? She invoked the generation skipping trust when she wouldn’t have her husband sign the prenup. Georgina? She finally meets Mr. Right, only he might be Mr. Wrong. And Cord? He might have committed the worst sin of all, marrying a middle-class woman who is mistaken for the caterer. It is she, Sasha, who guides us into the world of money, the Tom Townsend of the group, for those who obsess over the film Metropolitan. But by the end of the story, our sympathies have extended quite a bit further, with lots of laugh-out-loud moments along the way. Someone compared Jackson’s first novel to The Nest (or rather, everyone has) and I have to say, it’s about the best comparison I can come up with, too. And I loved The Nest, so connect the dots.
— Daniel GoldinMarch 2023 Indie Next List
“A wholly entertaining novel about a blue-blooded Brooklyn family and their reckoning with their privilege and wealth. There is an inevitable relatability to a dysfunctional family who is (mostly) trying their best in the world.”
— Courtney Flynn, Trident Booksellers & Cafe, Boston, MA
Description
A New York Times bestseller | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick
Chosen as a best book of the year by The New York Times | The New Yorker | Time | NPR | USA Today | Elle | Harper’s Bazaar | Town & Country
“The season’s first beach read, a delicious romp of a debut featuring family crises galore.”— The New York Times
“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.
About the Author
Jenny Jackson is a vice president and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. A graduate of Williams College and the Columbia Publishing Course, she lives in Brooklyn Heights with her family. Pineapple Street is her first novel.
