Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

320 pages

Published March 2023 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary:

Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process; Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family, and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider; and Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t have, and must decide what 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. Full of recognizable, loveable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.

My Thoughts: 

This book was our January book club selection, recommended by one of our members. It was also a Good Morning America book club selection and it appeared on a number of best of 2023 lists. I had really high hopes going into this one. I wish it would have lived up to them. Unfortunately, for me, it didn't. Which is not to say there wasn't something to like about it. 

What I Liked: 

• The ideas of it: middle-class girl marries into rich family and has to learn to navigate that environment, rich person begins to wake up to her privilege and wants to better herself, mom realizes that, while she loves her kids, being a stay-at-home mom isn't necessarily for her.
• There were a lot of themes addressed: family, privilege, racism, classism, infidelity, marriage, philanthropy and its warts. 
• The jabs at the truly rich, in so far as it went. 
• The characters, in so far as they were developed. One I really did like was Tilda. Why her? Because she didn't change - she never apologized for who she was and remained an elitist snob. Which makes her not so much a character I liked, but I appreciated the reality of her character. 

What Didn't Work For Me: 

• Those ideas I liked weren't as fully developed as I would have liked. I get that Jackson was trying to write a book that addressed some big issues but with a lighthearted approach. That approach often works for me (Lian Moriarty is terrific at it). Here I really wanted more depth. 
• All too often I wanted to slap almost all of the characters. Sasha married Chip in no small part because she wasn't too intensely in love with him; yet even before they are married, he hasn't stood up for her when it comes to his family. Why would she marry someone who picks his sisters over her? Why doesn't she stand up to him even after they are married and demand he choose her as his priority? Why doesn't he see that he never puts her first? Georgiana, who has an affair with a married man, who is truly oblivious to her privilege, even though she works in a non-profit to help those in need worldwide. Georgiana and Darley who make up their minds about Sasha early on and refuse to give her any grace, even knowing that she isn't from the world they've been raised in. They adore their brother, but think he's so clueless that he's marry a gold-digger? 
• There are plenty of jabs, as I said, at the rich. But then Jackson goes on about their clothes, their homes, their jewelry, their cars, their airplanes...all in a way that appeared to me to be meant to impress. Nothing is made, for example, of the fact that Brooklyn has been so gentrified that the people who used to live there have been chased out by astronomical prices. 
• I felt like the growth that we did see in the characters was too rapid. Georgiana suddenly wakes up one day and recognizes that she has well more money than she will ever need and decides to give it all away? (At the same time, she doesn't recognize that she's been looking down on her own sister-in-law for having come to the marriage with less.) 
• Georgiana becomes an addict (although it's never called that) and then she just suddenly isn't, without any work put into it. That's not how addiction works. 

Now, I do need to tell you that in addition to all of those glowing reviews from well-known writers and all of those spots on best book lists, everyone else in my book club liked this book a lot more than I did. And it does make a good book for discussion, so in that regard, I would recommend it. 

Happy Sunday! I've got sunshine, it's a big football day, and I get Tommy cake tonight to I'm a happy girl today. What's Tommy cake, you ask? It's a delicious chocolate cake with an insanely rich frosting that the Big Guy's grandmother made and she started calling it Tommy cake because BG's big brother loved it when he was little and he was her favorite. I. Can't. Wait! 

That pic to the left? Not today. Not any time this winter. While the south has gotten a lot of snow this past week, we haven't had this much snow all of the winter combined. We have, however, had a mean cold streak this past week - hats, mittens, scarves all required if you were going to be outside at all. On the plus side, January is almost done - the LONGEST month of the year! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I started Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertina, which was recommended to me by Mini-me. Very unusual and I'm really enjoying it. Meanwhile, they're reading Lauren Groff's Matrix, which we gave them for Christmas. 

Watched: Will and Harper, which we both highly recommend. It's a story about friendship, acceptance, finding your place in the world. Go into it open-minded and learn something. 

Read: Finally, Jodi Picoult's By Any Other Name. At almost 500 pages, it's taking me a while. 

Made: We're working on trying to use up the food we already have, instead of buying anything more (except milk and fresh produce). This week we've made a peanut stir fry (that also became chicken fried rice), tacos (leftover meat then became taco salads), chili cheese dogs (BG's favorite Saturday lunch). Partly this is a matter of not wasting food. Partly it's a matter of making room so we can stock up before prices begin to soar, which we fear will happen. 

Enjoyed: BG is having a milestone birthday this week and I've been planning a big weekend getaway to celebrate and having so much fun with it. He is completely clueless, which makes it even more fun!

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: I'm behind with the Cozy Minimalist communities Hushing Challenge for this past week, which was the family room so I'll be working on that. I've had time to do it, but it's a daunting task when you have a lot of bookshelves in a room and a lot of stuff on them. And then there will be a new room to work on announced on Tuesday. 

Thinking About: Ways to fight back.

Feeling: Overwhelmed and incredibly sad for our country, particularly for its most vulnerable citizens. 

Looking forward to: Dinner out on Tuesday for BG's bday. We're going with friends for a special event at a really good restaurant. 

Question of the week: If you're feeling like I am, how are you managing? 

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of An American Family by Robert Kolker

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of An American Family by Robert Kolker

Read by Sean Pratt

13 hours, 8 minutes

Published April 2020 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

 

Publisher's Summary: 

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

My Thoughts: 

In the early 1990's, the University of Nebraska football team had a player whose mental health ended his playing career and eventually ended up with him being shot and paralyzed by police. At the time, the word was that he had schizophrenia (that is not the diagnosis they later gave him). By that time, I had two small boys and I spent some portion of their late teens and early twenties worrying about schizophrenia because of what I'd learned all of those years earlier, terrified that one of them might begin exhibiting signs in his early twenties. Fortunately, neither did. 

Don and Mimi Galvin were not so fortunate. Because of mental illness, one of their sons killed himself and then his girlfriend, one of them sexually assaulted their two daughters, two of them died after decades of taking medication. 

When their eldest, Don Jr., the golden child began exhibiting troubling signs of mental illness in the 1960's, the Galvins worked hard to hide his illness from the outside world. Mimi, in particular, worked hard to get him the help he needed. But help was hard to find then, as it continued to be as one and then another of the boys' mental health declined, to find the help they needed. There was very little knowledge of schizophrenia - no known cause (nature vs. nurture being an ongoing battle amongst those who did research the illness) and no effective medical treatments that didn't leave the patient a shadow of themselves. As that young football player had done, the Galvin boys repeatedly stopped taking the medication, convinced that it was not helping or that its help came at too high a cost. Through it all, Mimi continued to fight for her sick boys, at the expense of her healthy children.

Alongside the story of the Galvins, Kolker also gives readers some background on the history of schizophrenia research and treatment, introducing readers to scientists and doctors who, in an effort to prove the biological and genealogical cause of the disease, worked tirelessly to find answers. '

Eventually the two paths crossed. Because of the high incidence of the disease in the Galvin family (as well as hundreds of other families who also had high percentages of family members with the disease), the researchers were able to reach a great number of conclusions as to the biological cause of the disease and to work toward finding a medical treatment. Here's where our medical system has failed all of those who came after the Galvins - there is not a lot of money to be made in developing and marketing medications to treat schizophrenics and so pharmaceutical companies don't. 

As I read, this book reminded me very much of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, although the Galvins were not unwilling participants. And unlike that book, this one doesn't end with an "at least groundbreaking research resulted and so many lives have been saved." Kolker ends with us understanding that, despite everything that researchers have learned, there's still a long way to go in finding out how to treat patients with schizophrenia. 

Tenth of December by George Saunders

Tenth of December by George Saunders

Read by George Saunders

5 hours, 40 minutes

Published January 2013 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

In the taut opener, “Victory Lap,” a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In “Home,” a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.

Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December—through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov’s dictum that art should “prepare us for tenderness.”

My Thoughts: 

I feel like a broken record when I say this, but it seems to be a truism (for me, at least) when I tell you that in this collection of short stories some were stronger than others. 

Maybe it's because I listened to it. As much a fan of having authors read their own works as I am, here is was something of a problem for me. Professional readers or actors are able to alter their voices to make the characters from story to story unique. Mr. Saunders either isn't or chose not to do so. Because of that, it was difficult for me to adjust to new stories because it felt very much like I was still listening to the main character from the last story. 

Maybe it's just me, because "real" reviewers praise the heck out of this collection. Perhaps I just don't get it; perhaps, once again, it would have made more sense for me to read one story a day and not read straight through. Maybe it's just that my reading mood, my mood in general, was not in a place to take in all of the unrelenting harshness of the stories.

All of that being said, some of these stories really made an impact. In "Victory Lap," I was literally on the edge of my car seat, not going in to work, as the story finished up, terrified by what might happen to the children involved. "Escape from Spiderhead" made me really consider the choices we make and truly what our criminal justice system and science might be capable of doing. So many of the stories (all?) deal with human beings capacity for hope, but also for delusion. No story captures that better than "Al Roosten." The story that really touched me the most was "Tenth of December," where a dying man, set out to commit suicide to avoid a slow, even more humiliating end, wanders out into the cold woods to die. When he sees a young boy fall into a not quite frozen lake, though, he needs to find the strength and determination to save him. 

And here I am, in the end, questioning whether or not short stories are for me. Or are the really good stories worth searching for amongst the stories that don't work as well for me? 

Life: It Goes On - January 19

Happy Sunday! It's sunny here...at least for now...but only a whopping 3 degrees so we're hunkering down. Sitting here next to the windows on the north side of the house, it's considerably cooler than where I've been sitting, enjoying my morning coffee and watching CBS Sunday Morning. May have to grab a cardigan and some slippers if I'm going to sit here long enough to finish this and write up a couple of reviews. How many more days until summer? 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker. I don't have any audiobooks that have become available just now, and I'm way behind on podcasts, so I'll probably listen to some of those until a book becomes available. 

Watched: Football, college basketball, women's professional volleyball. Did I tell you that Omaha is home to two professional women's teams? Last week we watched one team and this week we watched the other. Pretty excited that ESPN feels like there's a decent enough audience that they will be showing at least some of the matches for that team. It also has Nebraska alum on it, included two that are Olympians. 

Read: Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson for book club this week. 

Made: What did we eat this week? I'd like to tell you but I honestly can't remember anything other than homemade mac and cheese. I cannot get myself in the mood to cook lately. 

Enjoyed: Wednesday was hair night and you know I always love that. Friday we had dinner with friends and I always enjoy that. But what I most enjoyed was texts and FaceTime calls I was getting from Miss H, who is on a trip to Phoenix this week. Life was really hard for her for a really long time and it makes this mama's heart so happy to see her loving life and having great adventures. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: This past week, as part of the Cozy Minimalist Community's House Hushing Challenge, I started "hushing" my house. In hushing you clear the surfaces in a room (at least) and live with it emptied for at least 24 hours then make the decision on what to bring back. Tuesday the next room will be announced and I'm eager to start that, after seeing this past week's results. 

Thinking About: Less than two months until Daylight Savings Time begins and I can't wait for sun in the evenings. I mean, it's dark in the morning here until about the time I'm half way to work everyday - I don't care if it's light then since I can't see outside during the day anyway. 

Feeling: Lighter. This week I "hushed" my kitchen. Which is to say that I took everything off of the counters and refrigerator and lived with it like that for 24 hours before deciding what needed to come back in. I found new homes for several things (my big mixer will now live in the basement since I only use it a few times a year and I am loving the the result. Now to work on the tops of the cupboards!

Looking forward to: Book club this week. 

Question of the week: January tends to be the time that people either decide to start living healthier or to declutter and reorganize (or both). Are you one of those people, if so, which do you do? I have given up on using January as the time to start a regime for lifestyle (the gym is too full, there's often too much decadent food left over from the holidays, it's too cold to walk outside). But you know I'm all about any kickstart I can get to declutter and organize!