Pineapple Street

LoveReading Says

Delivering a deliciously juicy peek into the world of a New York WASP family with an obscene stash of old money, Jenny Jackson’s Pineapple Street debut is an un-put-down-able joy. Unpicking class, money, holding onto what you’ve got, and desiring something different with incisive wit and warmth, it’s smart, entertaining and headily escapist.

Home to the wealthy, influential Stockton family, Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights is one of the fanciest addresses in New York. At the head of family sit Tilda and Chip, she descended from political royalty, and he from a long line of property investors. They’re the kind of folk who frequent expensive tennis clubs, create elaborate wedding-worthy “tablescapes” for every meal, and think nothing of buying multi-million-dollar houses at charity auctions.

The Stocktons are also the kind of folk who gift their son Cord their sprawling family home, even though he married outside their class. It’s very clear his wife Sasha is from another world, a woman who comes to feel like she’s “stuck in a lose-lose situation, a member of a family in which she had no voice”.

Meanwhile, Tilda and Chip’s eldest daughter Darley gave up her inheritance when she married a wealthy banker and didn’t insist on him signing a pre-nup. Naturally, the Stocktons couldn’t risk him laying claim to their family money. Then there’s the youngest, Georgiana, a poor little rich girl who works for a non-profit and tumultuously comes to the realisation that “it was the money that had made her so horrible. It had made her coddled and spoiled and ruined, and she had no idea what to do about it” after suffering a tragic loss.

Shot-through with bickering and conflict, cover-ups and showdowns, astounding self-assurance and debilitating self-doubt, Pineapple Street is bitingly observed, with poignant moments of love and loyalty dappling a ripping yarn that unpacks what makes the super-rich tick.

Joanne Owen

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