Pineapple Street

Jackson’s debut provides an intimate window into the lives of the uber-wealthy Stockton family and their refined Brooklyn Heights’s neighborhood whose streets are named after fruits. Narrator Marin Ireland gives voice to three of the Stockton women—Sasha, an outsider from Rhode Island who has married eldest son Cord and is referred to as the “Gold Digger” by Cord’s casually catty sisters; eldest sister Darley, a mother of two and wife to Malcolm, a Korean American aviation-industry analyst; and youngest sister Georgiana, who is single but involved in a potentially explosive workplace relationship. With chameleon-like skill, Ireland reveals the nuances of each woman’s personality, capturing Georgiana’s cautious forays into independence, Darley’s distress when Malcolm loses his job, and Sasha’s struggles to be accepted by the impossibly snooty Stocktons. The Stocktons are a hard group to like—self-centered, exasperatingly out of touch, and consumed with the entitled minutiae of their everyday lives. Ireland allows their excess to show but deftly hints at the sorrow, insecurity, and deep love beneath their shiny facades.