And when actual tragedy intervenes, the question is whether lives cushioned – or numbed – by privilege can survive it any better than the rest of us. Darley is trying to manage motherhood alongside a feeling of having been ousted from the family nest and, when Malcolm is betrayed by Wasp colleagues in the workplace, the prospect of not being rich at all. The ripples surrounding the move soon widen, taking us from Sasha’s profound sense of not belonging in Pineapple Street to Georgiana’s unease at being a trust fund baby working to combat poverty in the developing world.

Sasha’s sisters-in-law call her “the gold-digger” behind her back, because she was shocked by the idea of signing a prenup. Sasha is our witness to the lives of the wealthy, parachuted into the family townhouse on the titular Pineapple Street when Tilda and Chip decide to downsize to a mere penthouse. Darley has renounced her trust fund because she refused a prenuptial agreement to wed tender-hearted nerdy Malcolm, aviation whiz and a second-generation immigrant of colour, while Cord, who works alongside his father, has just married Sasha, a graphic designer from a rough and ready blue-collar Rhode Island family. Pampered, naive Georgiana works for a charity and Darley and Cord have both “married out”. They consist of air-headed matriarch Tilda, obsessed with tennis and tablescapes her husband, the amiable Chip, who quietly manages the empire daughters Darley and Georgiana and son Cord. Her focus is on the Stockton family of Brooklyn, high net worth Wasp buccaneers of New York real estate.

This, then, is the train to which Jenny Jackson’s entertaining debut novel Pineapple Street hitches its wagon. And these days, with Succession and The White Lotus streaming to record audiences, the power struggles, moral dilemmas, interior designers and dirty secrets of the obscenely wealthy are big business.

S ince F Scott Fitzgerald first described the view from a West Egg mansion, the lives of the American 1% have been of keen interest to the rest of us whether we love them, love to hate them or want to know where they buy their shoes.

Jenny jackson book