I have so many conflicting feelings about Pineapple Street! This buzzy debut from powerhouse editor Jenny Jackson has been described “as close to crazy rich WASPs as WASPs can get” which pretty much sums up the basic plot.
Narrator Marin Ireland literally elevates any material, so it was her lively narration that really kept me invested in the escapades of the Stockton family. Are you interested in the lifestyle of a super-rich New York City family? Where some of the family members are (viciously) mean towards one another? Then you might enjoy this book.
Reviewers are polarized over this book and I can see why. Told from the viewpoint of three different Stockton women, I did feel affection towards several of the characters and overall, everyone does the right thing in the end. I think I enjoyed this audiobook more for Marin Ireland’s narration than the actual story so if you’re an audiobook fan, definitely give it a try.
About the Book:
Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected, carefully guarded, old-money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and inheritance for motherhood, sacrificing more of herself than she ever intended. Sasha, middle-class and from New England, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider, wondering how she might ever understand their WASP-y ways. Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t (and really shouldn’t) have and must confront the 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. It’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots and everything in between, and the insanity of first love.