MARCH 2023 - AudioFile
Narrator Marin Ireland excels at depicting the insular, privileged world of the Stockton family in contemporary Brooklyn Heights in this debut audiobook. Ireland gracefully takes listeners into an exclusive milieu of private schools, galas, and grand townhouses while beautifully conveying the frailties and emotional confusion that render this family relatable. In alternating chapters, Ireland expresses the nuanced perspectives of sisters Georgiana and Darley, and their sister-in-law Sasha. Ireland seamlessly shifts her tone and affect to bring forth Georgiana's panic disorder and anguish over a love affair, Darley's distress about her husband's job loss, and Sasha's difficulties with fitting into her husband's world. Ireland provides authentic characterizations for every supporting personality and sets a consistent yet propulsive pace. A surprisingly relatable family saga. M.J. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
Praise for Pineapple Street:
“Pineapple Street is that rarest of gifts—a novel you don’t want to put down for anything. Transporting and laugh-out-loud funny, this intergenerational story is a perfect tale for our times.”
—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Friends and Strangers
“In this vibrant and hilarious debut, Jenny Jackson has taken a familiar tale—siblings, family money, competing interests—and given it fresh life. What binds the book together so wonderfully is Jackson’s keen understanding of the beauty and difficulty of belonging, of how our desires can clash with our inherited narrative and what happens to the people we love when we need to rewrite the story. Pineapple Street is riveting, timely, hugely entertaining and brimming with truth.”
—Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest and Good Company
“Jenny Jackson delivers SUCH a delicious treat with her debut novel, Pineapple Street. It delights across the board — character (the wealthy, quirky Stockton family), setting (an insider’s look at Brooklyn) and plot (a searingly honest exploration of class and privilege.) With shifting points of view and smart, laugh-out-loud observations on every single page, Pineapple Street is an instant classic.”
—Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Hotel Nantucket
“Set in the windy, sun-dappled streets of Brooklyn Heights, Pineapple Street is a portrait of a NY family strait-jacketed by their own wealth that is at once searing, hilarious and poignant.”
—Miranda Cowley Heller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace
“I loved Pineapple Street. The characters are complex and engaging and their stories bring a particular slice of New York magically alive. So wise, emotionally honest, and such fun!"
—Helen Fielding, #1 bestselling author of Bridget Jones’s Diary
“Full of witty and caustic observations about a privileged class of New Yorkers, Pineapple Street is a sharp and juicy satire.”
—Nita Prose, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid
“I was entranced by Pineapple Street. Smart and complex, rich and gorgeous, this novel drew me in from page one. Both an escape into the lives of the fabulously wealthy and a bittersweet examination of family and heartbreak, Jenny Jackson's debut left me eagerly awaiting whatever magic she conjures next.”
—Amanda Eyre Ward, New York Times bestselling author of The Lifeguards
“I’m not sure which is bigger: Pineapple Street’s heart or its humor. It’s smart and surprising and, yes, scrumptious. I devoured it. I can’t recall the last time I read a novel that was both this heartwarming and this hilarious. One word of advice: clear your calendar before you start reading. You won’t stop until you’ve finished. It is, pure and simple, a treasure.”
—Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and The Lioness
“Nothing beats a story told this well.... I could not stop laughing at this hilarious insider’s view of Brooklyn Heights WASPs. Truly the smartest and most deliciously fun novel I’ve read in ages.”
—Kevin Kwan, New York Times bestselling author of Crazy Rich Asians
“Pineapple Street might be the Edith Wharton novel for our times…Wise, funny, tender, and utterly relatable.”
—Susie Yang, New York Times bestselling author of White Ivy
“A delight to read from start to finish, Jenny Jackson’s Pineapple Street is a cancel-all-plans kind of book. Utterly addicting, big-hearted and affecting, and full of delicious details, Jackson lets us into an outrageous world of generational wealth and privilege through the eyes of three fallible yet lovable women navigating the complexities of life on the inside. If I could have put this novel on a drip straight into my veins, I would have!”
—Ashley Audrain, New York Times bestselling author of The Push
“If you’re in search of the fiction trifecta – a captivating story that’s masterfully constructed, vividly peopled, and crisply written – look no further. Jenny Jackson’s “Pineapple Street,” is pure reading pleasure, hilarious, big-hearted, and full of emotional truths. It’s the kind of novel you hope will never end.”
—Adrienne Brodeur, New York Times bestselling author of Wild Game
“Jenny Jackson has written a lovely, absorbing, acutely observed novel about class, money and love. These are the themes of Henry James and Jane Austen, but they are observed with a fresh eye and a contemporary voice. Who wouldn’t want to read Pineapple Street?”
—Nick Hornby, New York Times bestselling author of Just Like You
“I devoured Pineapple Street. Jackson's writing brims with wit and warmth. Her characters are deliciously flawed and, at the same time, loveable and compelling. Her observations about family, money, class, and love are spot on....[A] messy, hilarious and ultimately relatable family story.”
—Cristina Alger, New York Times bestselling author of Girls Like Us
“I sucked it down like a milkshake… My favorite part of the novel was the heart. All the characters mess up, but make amends. They TRY. And they keep trying.”
—Helen Ellis, author of Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light
“A delicious new Gilded Age family drama—almost a satire—set in the leafy enclaves of Brooklyn Heights....A lighthearted book that captures a slice of New York society, a guilty pleasure that also feels like a sociological text, punctuated with very particular references to restaurants, preschools, nightclubs, and other pillars of urban life in 2023.”
—Vogue
“A witty, easy-to-devour story of wealth and love’s never-ending war in the modern age.”
—Elle
“This witty novel about the haves and have-mores is Succession with a soul.”
—TIME
“Love is at the heart of this sparkling debut novel by Jenny Jackson, which excavates old money and contemporary problems with satiric flair.”
—Southern Living
“A novel about inheritance and the cultural inanities of the American WASP, set in a maximalist mansion? Don’t mind if I do. Pineapple Street is more than a field report on the WASPs and their shabby-sweater super-wealth, of course—it’s about class difference and the taxations of love.”
—Bustle
“Let us now praise purely escapist novels that fizz and pop....Jackson...has a golden ear for the gilded social stratas of New York money, and all the cocktail benefits and secret codes that come with them.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“This is a literary version of The Real Housewives. Filled with fun, sometimes sloppy, characters with an enchanting and enthralling plot. This is the perfect book to shake off the winter snow with. Hot, hot hot.”
—Debutiful
“Packed with the pleasures of New York’s one-percent, wealth mixes with family and love in this witty debut.”
—SheReads
“Filled with humor, love, the ups and downs of marriage, and tennis whites, this family’s story is both endearing and exasperating. Readers will enjoy the author’s exploration of both the perks and downsides of generational wealth.”
—Booklist
“Jackson has a deft hand....Rich-people jokes, cultural acuity, and entertaining banter keep this novel moving at a sprightly pace....A remarkably enjoyable visit with the annoying one percent, as close to crazy rich WASPs as WASPs can get.”
—Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
01/09/2023
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. Agent: Brettne Bloom, Book Group. (Mar.)
MARCH 2023 - AudioFile
Narrator Marin Ireland excels at depicting the insular, privileged world of the Stockton family in contemporary Brooklyn Heights in this debut audiobook. Ireland gracefully takes listeners into an exclusive milieu of private schools, galas, and grand townhouses while beautifully conveying the frailties and emotional confusion that render this family relatable. In alternating chapters, Ireland expresses the nuanced perspectives of sisters Georgiana and Darley, and their sister-in-law Sasha. Ireland seamlessly shifts her tone and affect to bring forth Georgiana's panic disorder and anguish over a love affair, Darley's distress about her husband's job loss, and Sasha's difficulties with fitting into her husband's world. Ireland provides authentic characterizations for every supporting personality and sets a consistent yet propulsive pace. A surprisingly relatable family saga. M.J. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-12-14
Money makes the world go round, particularly the world of an elite Brooklyn family.
"On good days, Sasha could acknowledge how incredibly lucky she was to live in her house. It was a four-story Brooklyn limestone, a massive, formal palace that could have held ten of the one-bedroom apartments Sasha had lived in before. But on bad days...." As Sasha finally admits in a gloves-off monologue following a gender reveal party gone awry, on bad days, it's "a janky Grey Gardens full of old toothbrushes and moldy baskets." A wealthier cousin of Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's The Nest, Knopf editor Jackson's fiction debut is a comedy of manners charting the fates of the Stockton siblings and their spouses, circling around the house where they grew up in Brooklyn Heights, now inhabited by Cord and his wife, Sasha, who is referred to as the Gold Digger by Cord's sisters, Darley and Georgiana. That's unfair, though: Sasha signed a prenup. Meanwhile, Darley and her husband, Malcolm, a Korean American aviation-industry analyst who did not sign a prenup, are living off their own money as Darley fights the tedium of the entitled mommy lifestyle. Georgiana, much younger than her siblings, still single, is considered the do-gooder of the family because she works for a nonprofit, where she becomes involved in a passionate and very ill-advised relationship. From the opening scene, where Sasha's mother-in-law shows up to dinner with an entire replacement menu and a revised "tablescape," Jackson has a deft hand with all the passive-aggressive interactions that are so common in family life, perhaps particularly in this socio-economic stratum. She knows her party themes, her tennis clubs, her silent auctions, and her WASP family dynamics. Rich-people jokes, cultural acuity, and entertaining banter keep this novel moving at a sprightly pace as the characters learn their lessons about money and morals, though some of the virtuous reform seems a little much.
A remarkably enjoyable visit with the annoying one percent, as close to crazy rich WASPs as WASPs can get.
