Pineapple Street
Fiction
Pamela Dorman Books
March 7, 2023
Hardcover
304
Purchased
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.
My review:
I really enjoyed my time with this book, but there are a couple reasons why some may want to avoid it. First of all, if you don't like character driven books without much of a plot, this is probably not going to be one you'll want to pick up. Second, if you don't like reading about the day to day lives of the upper class, I would also skip. However, if those things are not an automatic deterrent, then this is a fun and well written story. One of my favorite tropes is what I call "rich people behaving badly", but I wouldn't really classify this family as that. Do they have frivolous and flippant tendencies? Yes, but mostly from the matriarch, and this novel focuses more on the three children and their significant others. I could definitely appreciate the humorous moments and the absolute over the top privilege, but I also felt that these characters did grow (for the most part, Tilda not so much) as the book progressed. By the end, I actually liked most of them! It's a case study of being born into wealth, how that looks, and what you actually do with your circumstance.
Do I think this novel is a work of genius with lush prose and important topics to highlight? No, but I do think it was a really fun read, and let's not forget the beautiful cover (and who doesn't love that?).
