I rarely read the afterward in an author’s book. Usually it’s because I’m too excited to get started on the next book to really care. But I enjoyed Pineapple Street so much, I raced to the afterward because I wanted to see what inspired her to write the book.
Reading it amused me because I think the book she produced was one her brain wrote as opposed to the one her heart thought she was writing. And that’s perfectly fine.
According to Jackson, she was inspired by some New York trust fund babies who were ashamed at how their parents had accumulated their wealth in a world of grotesque imbalances of race and class privilege. Apparently, some of these folks are trying to give their money back. To which I say: fine! Frankly, I don’t care; we could solve all this by taxing the hell out of inheritances and trusts. But sure, if it makes you feel better, I guess it beats acting like a jerk.
But that’s not what’s really going on in this book. There are elements of this but I don’t want to say how they present because it’ll be a spoiler I can’t avoid. Instead, this is a deep, textured character study of there people whose lives revolve around this blue blood family from Brooklyn Heights. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it but I don’t think naming them the Stocktons was an accident (they’re of good stock!). I wound up really engaged with the three characters and their first world problems and the kind of New York City wealth porn, the only kind of wealth porn I can indulge in. I greatly enjoyed how Jackson told the story, even if she took some shortcuts. And while I didn’t like the resolution, I concur that it is, in fact, a resolution.
At any rate, the character study makes for a far more interesting story than that of divesting oneself of their 1percenter status. I think that’s the story where Jackson’s mind was at and she did such a good job with it. It was readable, engaging and fun. The story her heart wanted to tell is buried in their somewhere and servers as probably the weaker parts of the book. But thankfully, her head beat her heart.
