Pineapple Street and Ghost Music

Amy and Geoff review the popular fiction novel Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson and literary fiction novel Ghost Music by An Yu. Pineapple Street is a bird's eye view into the moneyed Brooklyn Heights family The Stocktons. Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, marries into the family and tries to find her way. Set in Beijing, Ghost Music is a quiet book that examines the sad life of retired concert pianist Song Yan. A mysterious parcel of mushrooms begins arriving at her door each week and suddenly her life changes. Geoff also talks about his third failed attempt at reading Cormac McCarthy.

Books and Resources discussed:

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
Ghost Music by An Yu
Braised Pork by An Yu
Wiser than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, podcast
The Diplomat, Netflix

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:20

Welcome back to the Red Fern book review. I am your host, Amy Mair. And today I am joined by Jess, for one of my last podcasts of this season. And we are here to discuss two hot new releases. And they are pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson, and ghost music by on you. And we're also going to talk about a book that Jeff DNF or did not finish, as we say in the book, book world. And we will also finish or we will finish up with a discussion of a show that we're binging and podcast that I'm loving. So with that I wanted to say welcome back, Jeff.

Geoff Mair: 1:06

Thanks, see, so good to be here once again.

Unknown: 1:09

So first, let's talk about the book that wasn't. We talked and you decided on a book that you thought you'd be really interested in. And no surprise, you picked a big intense book. And you didn't finish it. So can you tell people what was the book? And what happened?

Geoff Mair: 1:31

So I decided to read the passenger by Cormac McCarthy, which is his, you know, relatively new book. It just came out, I think, at the end of 2022. And, you know, Kirk McCarthy's like, it seems like an author that I should really like he's, you know, he's very good writer, you know, he writes complicated and sort of like, this one, at least is kind of, you know, has some surrealism to it. Yeah, so I'm on paper. He's got all the things that I like, and an author, but I found this book. Well, it was really beautifully written very difficult to read, like really, really hard. And I also found it quite bleak. Like, all the characters are kind of, nobody's very happy. There's nothing very like, yeah, there's nothing there's no real hope in the book I found about halfway through, I decided it probably wasn't going to be for your listeners, because it wasn't a fit for them. For most of them, and I don't really I didn't really love it. So

Unknown: 2:32

what's the what's the basic plot?

Geoff Mair: 2:34

So it's about this character name, body Western, he lives in past Christianne in the 1980s. And he is a salvage diver. He used to live there briefly. He did. Yeah, he used to live right, right by there and Biloxi. So the beginning of the book, his employer, the diving company, the salvage company is employed by a mysterious customer to go and do a salvage dive on an aeroplane that's gone down. And when they're diving, they discover that the flight recorder is missing, and that there's only seven passengers in there out of the eight passengers on the manifest. So throughout the book, they're kind of looking and trying to figure out what happened to the mysterious eight passenger. And they're, you know, they're the the mystery ensues. So the story of the story sort of happens in with two main characters, Bobby Western who eat your versus his way across, you know, the taverns of New Orleans first, and then across the United States. He's constantly sort of discussing philosophy and quantum physics and all these very sort of like, intellectual, you know, social things that are going on in the world. But, you know, it's all in the premise of, you know, trying to find out what's happened to this, this mysterious eighth passenger and the whole time he's sort of constantly shadowed by these mysterious agents who want to question him about the the plane crash. And, you know, so there's this real sort of aura of paranoia over the whole, the whole book,

Unknown: 4:12

it sounds like a pretty good premise.

Geoff Mair: 4:15

Yeah, no, it's kind of interesting. Um, ya know, it's actually kind of an interesting story. And it's very well written it that that story, you know, is paralleled by the story of body Western sister who is named Alicia. And she's schizophrenic. And so half the story is better than the Western story. And you know, maybe less than half is Alicia story. But Alicia story is really a story, you know, told to someone who has schizophrenia it's all you know, things that are going on in her mind. She has hallucinations and the leader of the cast of characters in her hallucinations is a character named that that the lid of my kid And he's got, you know, a group of Merry Pranksters who, you know, hallucinate with and they're constantly sort of fermenting and cuddling. Alicia and what's really bleak about it is like, they're her tormentors. But they're, they're kind of early friends. So that part of the story is really hard to follow. It's very surreal. You never quite know what's going on. And even for me, I you know, I struggled with that I love stuff. That's super surreal. That's that's the kind of stuff I like to write, but sorry, that I like to read, but I found this. Yeah, a little bit. A little bit too hard.

Unknown: 5:37

Um, M. So the passenger came out in the fall, and then came out I think in November, and then a month later, Stella Maris the sequel was released. And what that is, is that's the name of the psychiatric hospital, where the main character, which is Alicia, Alicia is the star of the season Austin has admitted herself to so that's that's the second books about

Geoff Mair: 6:04

her. And the second book is the first book that Cormac McCarthy has written with a female character as lead, which I thought was kind of interesting. He's there. He's a very sort of, yeah, his books are pretty male dominated, I would say.

Unknown: 6:19

Yeah. And his books. A little about him. So Jeff mentioned that you you tried to read all the Pretty Horses in the road, I think. And those are his best known books. He's written 12 novels. He's written plays, screenplays short stories. And as we talked about, his focus is the American West and often post apocalypse. He uses a lot of violence. And one thing I read about him as he uses kind of his own form of punctuation. Did you notice that when you were reading that?

Geoff Mair: 6:52

Oh, for sure, yeah. Yeah, it does work. I mean, it's he is playing with sentence structure. And he's playing with grammar, and he's playing with punctuation a lot. But it works. I mean, I still feel like it flows. It's, you know, it's a hard to read, but but not because of that.

Unknown: 7:14

And he's considered one of the great American writers, and he has been compared to Hemingway. Another kind of fun fact, his name is actual, actually, he was born Charles McCarthy, but he changed his name because there was a famous ventriloquist, Edward Bergen, who's Candice Bergen's dad. And he had a dummy named Charlie McCarthy. So he, he changed his name. And they're not sure where it came from. Some people say it was a family nickname. He has an Irish his Irish heritage. And then other people say it was the name given to him. Or he changed his name because it was the person Cormac McCarthy constructing Blarney castle, and he liked the idea of that. So that's kind of cool. Okay, so anything else you want to say about that book? No. Okay. I think we're good to go. I think you probably don't want to read this book. Unless you're already a fan. That's what I'm gonna get. Yeah, I

Geoff Mair: 8:20

think it'd be love Cormac McCarthy, you love this book. This is like it's considered, you know, his. I wouldn't call it the pinnacle of his writing. But it is certainly a book where He's taking great liberty because he's kind of towards the end of his career. And he's already proved that he's a great writer. So he, it was a little I found it a little self indulgent, you know, because he just wrote so much. Yeah. So if you'd like to have it prepared for you like this, if you don't, you won't.

Unknown: 8:48

Okay, so that's a little segue, though. Cormac McCarthy is a segue to the next book we're going to talk about, which was a book that I read on my own. And it's called pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson. And it is a big book this season. So I would recommend it. I think I talked about I think last episode or the episode before the villa, we talked about that. And that this is kind of in that vein, it's a light book, it's a summer read. It's kind of of the moment, but it's not very taxing. And what it's about, it's kind of a fish out of water stories contemporary novel about family love and class. And I would say it's been marketed as a modern age. Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, and it's an inner look at New York society. And the title is named after the book is named after one of the fruit streets and Brooklyn Heights where this book is sets. And in Brooklyn Heights, which is like the fancy part of Brooklyn, there are these three streets called pineapple, orange and cranberry streets. And they're known for their historic architecture. And they're beautiful. And they're very close to the promenade where this is a well known kind of walkway. And the origin of the names is interesting. Legend has it that there was a local resident that a woman that hated the fact that streets were always named after wealthy landowners. So she ripped apparently ripped down the original street names the middle of the night and put these names up. And then, but then another thought is that pre Civil War, some fruit sellers used put named the streets after the spirits that they sold. And it was sort of like a modern day billboard promotion. Yeah. So that that was kind of interesting. But so this book, what it's about, it's about this family called the Stockton family, and they're an old money, Brooklyn Heights family, they have a place in the Hamptons, they belong to private clubs. And they, the grandparents are known as geeky DD Pippin pop. That sounds is very waspy. And the family's main house is known as the limestone and the main characters, their three children in the family, and there's a cord. And then there's an eldest daughter Darley, and then there's Georgiana. And but the story is really about Sasha. And the book is told from multiple points of view, which I always find fun. But Sasha is an interloper. She's from Rhode Island, her dad, I think, as a cop, and she grew up very middle working class, and kind of she marries court and gets thrust into this society. So and then there's a little bit, you know, I won't tell you much more other than you're really just getting that kind of bird's eye view. And, you know, things happen, like she gets mistaken for the help at a party. One thing that I did think really rang true was they play a lot of tennis in this book, and they actually either the author herself plays tennis, or she researched it because it was authentic, you would know. And I would know I enjoy playing tennis in my free time. And but I you know, there was another book that came out not very long ago, Leanne, more Moriarty. I think we talked about this, or I talked about this on the podcast, she wrote a book recently called apples never fall, and it's about tennis. And it just didn't really ring true. But I wanted to read one little passage in this book that really captures kind of the vibe and the tone. And this is about Sasha and how she feels in this world that she's been thrust into. So it says Sasha felt wrong footed 90% of the time, but also simultaneously felt she was Molly Ringwald in 80s movie and everyone else was the preppy villain. Chords world was full of pearl girls all wearing their grandmother's earrings and crisp button downs and loafers. As interchangeable as they were sexless. Sasha often had the sneaking suspicion that if she saw them naked, they would have bodies as smooth and flat as Barbies. She swore to herself that the day she tied a cable knit sweater around her shoulders would be the day she died. Good for her. So that's it. Um, I would say this book. I liked it. And actually, if you just want to have fun, and also it's always fun to read the kind of the hot book of the season. i This is a book for you. It's got a fun cover, it comes out. It came out in paperback, which is nice. You don't have to buy it in hardcover. But one of the really interesting things is the author herself Jenny Jackson, because the author is really an editor that's this is her first book and this was her pandemic project. And she's kind of a wunderkind over at North WA. And she's 43 years old. She calls herself an aging millennial. And she was the editor on the Cormac McCarthy book, The passenger, and she's known for being a hitmaker. And the books that she looks for are kind of those books that straddle the line between literary and commercial fiction. She was the editor on our favorite book of last year tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevon. She has edited Emily St. John Mandel, Chris Bohjalian or Bohjalian P You're Heller, Catherine. gagne, Jennifer close. I'm reading her book right now it's called marrying the ketchups as Morel does, Santiago, Helen Ellis and the actress Selma Blair, who just recently came out with an autobiography or memoir,

Geoff Mair: 15:18

question. Yeah. So is it a commentary on wasp? fishness? Yeah,

Unknown: 15:23

it is. Yeah. So

Geoff Mair: 15:24

it's kind of anti Wasp business. Ah,

Unknown: 15:29

interesting. I think it's the ridiculousness of it, right? I mean, there is a scene where, like, for example, one of the daughters think it is, oh, it's the eldest daughter. So she married her husband and didn't want, she has husband. And she didn't want to have them sign a prenup, because she thought I think she thought it was, I don't know, means the marriage isn't going to work or something. And so because they wouldn't sign a prenup. He they she lost her inheritance. And it goes on to the next generation. And it's sort of there's a whole storyline around that about and I won't get too into because there's a bit of a mystery around that, but I don't know. Yes, I think it is commentary. But and some of it's ridiculous. Like, some of these people do a lot of good in the world, while at the same time. They leave their job and then go, you know, to a fancy Gala. And, you know, the Hamptons. So there's that kind of sounds like a book you would like

Geoff Mair: 16:43

to sell like a book I would leg is probably not my genre so much, you know, I I tend to gravitate towards certain kinds of books. And that's, that's probably not in it. You know, maybe if I wanted something kind of later to read, which I believe reading something late right now and I play like it. So maybe I would

Unknown: 17:01

like to write that's a What are you reading now or both?

Geoff Mair: 17:05

I'm reading romantic comedy, and it's quite, it's quite fun. Don't say anything more

Unknown: 17:09

about it. It's Curtis Sittenfeld. So everyone should read that because we're going to come back in the fall and talk about but anyway, okay, so the second book we read is a literary fiction book. And it is called Ghost music by on you. And this is a toll one ad from pineapple Street. It's not very long. It's very literary, very dreamlike. I thought the best thing about this book was just the writing itself. But let's tell it let me tell everyone just a little bit about what it's about because it's about a woman who lives in Beijing. Her name is Sun Yan. And she sat, she was a concert pianist. And she's not doing that anymore. And she's in what appears to be a loveless marriage. She, her husband, she lives with her husband ballin, but he travels all the time. It's clear, he's got either another life or other priorities. He doesn't really care. And he is a car executive. And so she's left at home with his mom, who isn't very nice to her. And she seems super unhappy. So everyone's unhappy. But the one thing that is somewhat interesting is there are talking mushrooms in this book. And there is a strange orange mushroom that comes to her at night and talks to her. So I guess we're going to call this book has met, it's infused with magical realism. And oh, yeah, and subsequent to that, there is all of a sudden a parcel of mushrooms starts arriving on this woman's doorstep every week. And so her and her mother in law, get together and make things from these exotic mushrooms. And they make soups and stews. And so there's that whole element there. So and then eventually they find out who's been sending the package and there's a bit of a mystery there. Sort of. So what did you think of the book?

Geoff Mair: 19:17

Ah, I liked it. I didn't love it. I think I didn't love it. It's very quiet. Quiet, but it is very dreamlike. I agree with that. I think the writing is absolutely beautiful. And she creates this sort of very dreamlike environment, which I think is quite quite beautiful, but not very much happens. Like it's just a very I found it a little slow paced. I wanted more, you know, plot development and more more going on. Yeah, that's sort of my take on it.

Unknown: 19:49

I would agree. Now, I'm going to ask you what because I'm not really sure like these mushrooms. First of all, they're creepy. I'm not sure what's going on with the mushrooms but What did the talking mushroom mean to you?

Geoff Mair: 20:03

Yeah, there's kind of two aspects to the sort of surreal part of the book, there was the talking mushrooms. And there's also like this mysterious orange cloud. I never didn't really figure out what the I never came up with a hypothesis on what the orange cloud is about. But it's got interesting. But to me, the mushrooms are really about the stuff that gets left unsaid, you know, between family members, it's kind of like stuffed in the dark, and takes on a life of its own. And so when you, you know, I think the concept behind the mushrooms is when people don't talk about stuff, you know, things grow out of it, that can be bad or good, and they come back to haunt you. And so the mushrooms are actually, you know, the mushroom at 1.0. Maybe I shouldn't well, I'll just,

Unknown: 20:50

I think you can well, I don't know how

Geoff Mair: 20:55

I'll say it. You know, the one point the the mushroom at one point reveals, well, I'm not really a mushroom, I'm work close to a ghost. And so that was really telling to me, because it really, to me sort of is, is like the ghosts of the things that are left unsaid or the ghosts, you know, the sort of all the things that are left in the closet that don't get talked about, right, and the ghosts come back to haunt you later on in life. And that's that's sort of what happens. Oh, it's more to me, it's more of a ghost or even a surrealist? Well,

Unknown: 21:26

it's called Ghost music. Exactly. So I don't think you respond that that doesn't matter did the magical realism as a literary device work for you?

Geoff Mair: 21:36

I read a ton of magical realism that is my genre. So I thought I really liked this book. And I liked it. But, you know, what I found with the that part of it is it wasn't super integrated in it would happen, you know, there was some mushroom stuff at the beginning there was then there's like a long stretch in the middle, where there, there wasn't sort of surrealist stuff going on. And then you know, there was a big mushroom part of the, you know, in, say, last the last quarter of the book, or last money and quite quarter. So I kind of would have liked it more integrated. Because it would have kept my interest a bit more, I think.

Unknown: 22:12

I thought the descriptions of the food was great. And there's a lot on music if you're interested in music. And another criticism I do of the book of the book, is I didn't find at the end, things totally tied together to a way that was satisfying for me like I, I really felt it was about the atmosphere that this author was creating, which I thought she did a good job.

Geoff Mair: 22:39

That was the best part of that is like this kind of dream. Like,

Unknown: 22:42

yeah, if you like literary fiction, I think you should look at it. I would give this four out of five stars. I personally actually enjoyed it more than pineapple Street. Just because I thought it was beautiful writing. But I did it for it is not. It is not a page turner. Let's just say

Geoff Mair: 23:02

you got to go into like the words and stories

Unknown: 23:06

on you a little bit about her. She was born and raised in Beijing. And she spent time in London, New York and Paris. And her debut, she's She looks young to me. Well, yeah, everyone kind of looks young now. But she's I think she's quite young, young air quotes.

Geoff Mair: 23:28

The opposite? I think they have limits.

Unknown: 23:30

Yeah, I know that. I know. That's just not. I know, just always like, oh, you know, they're our age. And they're like, 35 No, no, that's not true. But you do. You do often think that's not true. Anyway, she's the author. Her first book is called braised pork and I, it came out in 2020. And I think it's a similar kind of, I think there's a lot of food. And I think there might be some magical realism there. So, um, oh, she has been compared to Haruki Murakami, who is a fabulous Japanese writer with a cult following. And he's written the book she would know by him potentially is the windup bird, Chronicle and Kafka on the shore. So those are two different things people can consider. And let's talk about something that I know you loved. And that's a show we've been binging the diplomat. And I think a lot of you have been watching this and if you haven't, you might want to check it out. It's a soapy fun show about a diplomat Keri Russell, who is the ambassador, American Ambassador to London, which is the cherry plum job for other ambassadorships, United States and her rogue dastardly husband Rufus, played by Rufus Sewell. and they are so they play Kate and how Weiler and they've just landed in London she's taking on this job. And that's the story. So what do you think?

Geoff Mair: 25:14

I think it's blank as hell Wyler is also a diplomat. But he you know, and he was a diplomat, you know, in some sort of like, I can't remember where but in like a very hot region where there's and he, you know, now he is the spouse of a diplomat, his wife and he doesn't know what to do with them self so he's a funny character because he he really wants to help Keri Russell's character be successful, right, you know, diplomat to England, right. But he's doing it in such an underhanded and like all the worst are things you think about international politics. Yeah, all the moves. And it drives her crazy. But but his buddies is helping him and their relationships funny because he I think he loves or, but they kind of hate each other too.

Unknown: 26:05

Yeah, they definitely don't like each other. They keep saying they're gonna get divorced, but

Geoff Mair: 26:10

Well, I think he's in love with it, though.

Unknown: 26:13

Yeah. Anyway, there's definitely going to be a season two, because we watch the whole thing and they don't even they don't even it's obviously there's coming. I kind of want like, I love like, BBC kind of dramas. And I felt like they would they it's more this is more soapy version of it, like I but I definitely enjoyed it. And I liked that we could watch it together.

Geoff Mair: 26:40

Well, I kind of like the you know, the view into sort of like, international politics and how countries, you know, dedicate relate to each other, although we know somebody who's in that world, and she said it's totally unrealistic.

Unknown: 26:54

But she said she liked it. She liked the show. So yeah. And okay, so check that out. And I wanted to conclude by highly recommending a podcast called wiser than me with Julia Louis Dreyfus. It's just come out. And it's the number one podcast right now. I think it's surpassed smartlace. And it's Julia interviewing older women, and talking about their lives. And it's done. It's very candid as the best podcasts are. And it's also funny as, as she is, and I listened to the episode she did with Ruth Rachel. And it's hilarious, because at one point, they're having this great conversation. And she's like, so I have a question. And she delves into a very personal question about a recipe that have roots that she's tried and didn't quite work out. And what does she think and shouldn't GM or almonds should she had this? And I don't know. It just was fun, because it sort of seemed like that's what you would do with a friend. So she interviews Fran Liebowitz Jane Fonda, Amy Chan, and Elekta. It has it has heart, it isn't just like smartlace I love smartlace. But sometimes it doesn't go deep enough.

Geoff Mair: 28:19

I'm super surprised that surpass meritless. That's a

Unknown: 28:23

well, I could be wrong, but I believe it has. So it's also new. So yeah. Anyway, I that's all I have to say. And thank you so much for coming Coliseum with me today. And I hope you're going to be doing a lot of reading. So Duff has now he's gone to DJ school, which I think we've talked about before, which is taking away from some of his reading activities. Yeah. So I hope you don't give up. So we have a delay on this podcast because he was otherwise occupied. But anyway, let's together. Okay, so happy reading everyone over the summer, and we're gonna do one actually, we're gonna do one more, we're going to come back with one of my favorite guests. Sorry, Jeff. But equally equally favorite guests is Susan Matheson who's going to talk to everyone what they should be reading this summer. So thanks so much, and I'll talk to you later. Awesome. Thanks, Amy. Thanks.