Jenny Jackson, THE SHAMPOO EFFECT: A Novel
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked. I'm Zibi Owens. I've interviewed more than 2,000
[0:06]authors on this show and learned endless amounts about storytelling,
[0:10]reinvention, and life itself. Because when you talk about books, you're really
[0:14]talking about life. So get ready to hear from today's best authors,
[0:18]the best-selling, and the not yet discovered. Come find your next great
[0:22]read and the story behind it. Enjoy. Jenny Jackson is the author of the
[0:28]Shampoo Effect, a novel. Jenny is the New York Times best-selling author
[0:32]of Pineapple Street, which she came on this podcast to discuss.
[0:36]A graduate of Williams College and the Columbia Publishing course, Jenny is vice
[0:40]president and editorial director of fiction at Alfred A. Knough, raised
[0:44]in Ipswich, Massachusetts. She lives in Brooklyn Heights with her family. I was so
[0:48]excited to talk to her about her latest book. Welcome, Jenny. Thanks so much for
[0:52]coming back on Totally Booked to talk about the shampoo effect. Congratulations.
[0:56]So happy to be here with you. Yeah. Thank you. Yay. Oh my gosh. Okay.
[1:02]Tell listeners about this fabulous book. All the twists and turns. Now I'm
[1:08]kidding. Tell everybody what it's about. So it's the story of a young woman.
[1:12]She's a writer. She grew up in New York. Her mom is a very famous
[1:16]thriller writer and her mom's sort of finagled her a job in New York publishing.
[1:20]So she's a nepo baby. And she realizes she needs to spread her wings,
[1:26]go off on her own. So she wins a fellowship to study, to work in Massachusetts
[1:30]and write her great American novel. And it comes with this cottage on a beach.
[1:34]But when she gets there, instead of getting to work, she meets a guy.
[1:38]And she falls in love and soon she's spending all of her time with him
[1:42]and his wild friends until she learns that one of his friends
[1:46]is pregnant and the baby is his. So it becomes a story about
[1:50]parenthood, about love, about what millennial marriage really means
[1:56]and about whether or not you can love someone who is having a baby with someone else.
[2:02]The age-old question. The age-old question.
[2:06]I mean, what is millennial marriage?
[2:12]I mean, what can people think? I've heard that it's like on the out.
[2:16]Nobody wants to get married anymore. Is that it?
[2:18]Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I think is so funny
[2:20]is like there have been all these articles. I think
[2:24]New York magazine's the cut publishes an article about once a week about polyamory
[2:28]about, you know, open marriages. Honestly, I don't have a ton of friends
[2:32]and open marriages, but I do have a lot of friends who think their marriage
[2:36]is different than their parents' marriage. You know, I have friends who are
[2:40]full 50-50. The husband does half the house worker. He thinks he does.
[2:44]Or I have several friends who didn't meet the right guy and said, I'm just going to do it
[2:48]on my own and had kids on their own. I have plenty of gay friends who have children.
[2:52]I have lots of friends who are divorced.
[2:56]So we all do think we're doing marriage in our own way
[3:00]but at the end of the day, there is sort of the understanding that it's a lot
[3:04]easier when you have someone to raise kids with.
[3:08]It doesn't come without its pains. Yes.
[3:12]Well, you show us that in many ways throughout the book
[3:16]and in the section of that new motherhood,
[3:20]which is always so easy and relaxing.
[3:24]I've heard the birth scene could be sort of triggering for people also when they read it.
[3:28]The birth scene is a bit realistic.
[3:30]You know, I had a C-section, so I was a casual observer
[3:34]to the whole scene. So, you know,
[3:36]there you go. And many C-sections.
[3:38]Anyway, too much information.
[3:40]Okay, so first of all,
[3:42]the relationship of the side character of the agent might be one of my favorites.
[3:46]I feel like he is the unsung hero of this thing.
[3:50]He was like, this is duplicitous sort of out for himself.
[3:54]Guy. Like, I just think he is just a refreshing,
[3:58]like a refreshing character.
[4:00]I love a cad. He is the rote. He is the cad.
[4:04]He is the sort of bad guy that are that a narrator fell for.
[4:08]Who may or may not be that bad because at least he says what he wants.
[4:13]He is, yeah, in a weird way.
[4:15]He is the only person who's really honest that he wants to make money.
[4:19]He wants success. He's going to do what it takes to get it.
[4:22]But he's not actually all that unkind about it at the end of the day.
[4:26]I'm not giving anything away.
[4:28]But he says what he means.
[4:30]Yeah.
[4:31]That's always nice.
[4:32]So he's an editor.
[4:33]I think it's really generous that I wrote such a nice part for an agent.
[4:37]I mean, come on.
[4:39]Yes, the community will thank you for that.
[4:42]Oh my gosh.
[4:44]But the main female characters really, you know,
[4:48]inhabit the heart of it.
[4:49]And actually, I guess the male lead as well.
[4:52]But I feel like the relationships between all of these women
[4:55]and their conversations and different paths and competition.
[5:00]And actually, I guess really for, right?
[5:02]There's Caroline and there's this trio, Fran and Augusta and Bailey.
[5:07]And so we get to watch as they all have their own dramas.
[5:11]And then they all come together to as part of a shared drama as well.
[5:16]And then Caroline is the ultimate outsider, right?
[5:18]Who comes in to this community and is like, oh my gosh, you know,
[5:22]do I, you know, they're so it's such a close thing that they,
[5:27]your, your casual, you know,
[5:29]quips are, are cut right to the heart.
[5:34]Talk about this sort of like in, in group, out group dynamic.
[5:38]Yeah.
[5:39]So these three women, Bailey, Fran and Augusta, they've all grown up together.
[5:44]And I mean, I definitely thought a lot about,
[5:46]especially my best friend from high school,
[5:48]but the way when you're young,
[5:50]you're just constantly sleeping over each other's houses.
[5:53]You've seen like your best friend's dad in his like pajamas.
[5:57]You've like, you know, use the shampoo at their house.
[6:00]You have like woken up there in the night.
[6:03]You've like cuddled with their dog.
[6:05]Like there's like an intense kind of relationship that you have
[6:08]when you're when your childhood best friends with somebody.
[6:11]That relationship follows you throughout your life.
[6:14]If you're lucky enough to still be friends with those people,
[6:17]you do have these funny little bumps
[6:20]where you've made different decisions with your lives.
[6:23]You have very different kinds of people.
[6:26]You've pursued your professions more or less aggressively.
[6:29]You're raising your kids differently.
[6:31]And in a weird way, those different decisions
[6:34]can almost feel like tiny betrayals between friends of your youth.
[6:39]You know, like, well, you did it that way,
[6:41]but I did it this way.
[6:42]Why are we doing it different ways?
[6:44]And in order to like maintain friendships with people you've known
[6:48]for a long time, you just have to sweep some stuff under the rug.
[6:52]You have to let some things go.
[6:54]You can't kind of like say it every time you have a problem with somebody.
[6:57]So these are three friends who have been close-knit for so long
[7:02]and who frankly have brushed some stuff under the rug.
[7:05]Some pretty big stuff under the rug.
[7:07]When this newcomer, Caroline, the New Yorker,
[7:10]breaks into this group.
[7:12]She's the disrupting factor.
[7:14]And so it sort of forces these old friends who are so tight,
[7:18]but who also have some baggage to kind of air their dirty laundry
[7:22]in a way that's very painful for everybody.
[7:24]So interesting.
[7:25]What is a group you have felt like a Caroline?
[7:28]Mm.
[7:29]You know, I think that because I married a Native New Yorker,
[7:33]I have often felt like the Caroline, you know,
[7:36]because my husband has all of his best friends
[7:39]from like childhood from high school.
[7:41]I'm all here.
[7:42]And so I'm frequently the one kind of observing and eavesdropping
[7:46]and, you know, like the outsider.
[7:49]I also have to admit two books in a row.
[7:52]I really do have an affinity for the outsider.
[7:54]I think that when a new person enters a social group,
[7:58]being able to see through their eyes,
[8:00]lets you learn more as a reader about these characters,
[8:04]then they would ever be able to tell you about themselves.
[8:07]And I think Massachusetts, you know,
[8:09]up in a town, exactly like the one where the book is based.
[8:12]And small town Massachusetts can be very insular.
[8:16]It can be very insidery.
[8:18]You know, like, I mean, if you grew up there,
[8:21]then you belong.
[8:22]If you didn't, you didn't.
[8:23]And we had this funny thing where I,
[8:25]my parents moved to my hometown,
[8:27]Ipswich, Massachusetts, when I was six months old,
[8:29]but my parents were southerners.
[8:31]So like, we were never actually counties.
[8:34]We were never really so deep in the fabric there.
[8:37]My mom has been part of the garden club for 45 years now.
[8:40]She's still kind of a new one there, you know.
[8:43]And that really is kind of,
[8:45]there is like an insider nest in these small New England communities.
[8:49]I mean, there's this great quote.
[8:51]It's from Gloucester.
[8:52]I thought in this documentary about Gloucester,
[8:54]where it said around here,
[8:56]the family trees are so tight.
[8:58]It's more like a wreath.
[8:59]And you run the very real risk of marrying your cousin.
[9:02]Cause it's just like such a tight community.
[9:05]Love that family tree with a wreath.
[9:07]That's a good one.
[9:08]Love that.
[9:09]Okay.
[9:10]As an editor and an author,
[9:13]I'm sure you must have some self censoring when you're writing
[9:17]or maybe you don't.
[9:18]Let me phrase that differently.
[9:20]Do you have self censoring as like an expert editor
[9:23]when you're writing yourself?
[9:25]I mean, I think that I have had the wonderful chance to observe
[9:30]like a lot of writing up close.
[9:33]And I've seen a lot of ways where a plot can go awry,
[9:37]where things can fall apart.
[9:38]And I think that I've learned really well from my writers,
[9:41]how to construct a novel.
[9:43]I think that when I'm writing,
[9:45]I have to make an active decision to not overthink it too much.
[9:50]Because it's so easy to like kill every idea that you have.
[9:54]If you think, oh, that's too, you know,
[9:56]that's been done here.
[9:58]That's been done there.
[9:59]It's been a long time.
[10:00]that didn't work when so and so did it.
[10:01]So I think there's two things happening
[10:03]where I think like big picture-wise,
[10:05]I'm taking a lot of instruction from all the books
[10:08]that I've read and edited,
[10:09]but on like a micro level when I'm in the flow,
[10:12]I'm trying really hard not to swim myself down.
[10:15]One of Pamela Dorman's amazing writers Rosie Walsh
[10:19]talked about how sometimes she will turn the font white
[10:23]when she's writing and she will write in white
[10:25]so that she can't censor herself.
[10:28]I am such a bad typist that that would like never work for me.
[10:31]I would turn it back to black and be like,
[10:32]oh my God, that's gobbledy-gug,
[10:34]but I take this spiritual guidance from that
[10:38]which is like let it rip and then come back back later.
[10:41]I love that.
[10:43]I feel like all your characters
[10:44]are really wrestling with responsibility, right?
[10:47]They're at its fees and their lives
[10:49]where they have to stop being kids
[10:51]and somehow become adults
[10:53]and some of the responsibility lies
[10:55]in still tending for their family of origin.
[10:58]Like Fran and all the financial issues
[11:00]and Augusta and her kids and Bailey and her new baby
[11:05]and waiting and then Caroline and her first big job
[11:08]sort of away from her mom.
[11:10]And so I feel like trying to wrestle with that
[11:14]and knowing that you have to bear that
[11:17]for the rest of your life is something
[11:19]that is hard to square with the more carefree elements
[11:25]of young adults and speak.
[11:28]What do you think about that?
[11:29]I mean, I think it's kind of like hilarious for me
[11:32]to feel like in some ways I've written a coming of age
[11:35]novel about 30-year-olds, you know?
[11:37]Like, okay, they're parents, like come on.
[11:39]But I really do believe that the biggest coming of age
[11:43]you have, the biggest sort of growth experience you have
[11:46]is becoming a parent, you know?
[11:48]I mean, you go to college and you grow up,
[11:50]you get your first department and you grow up,
[11:52]you get your first job and you grow up.
[11:53]But honestly, you're still only looking out for you.
[11:56]When you have children, you have to radically change
[12:00]every single day.
[12:01]You have to radically change every priority.
[12:03]You have to just make these huge adjustments to who you are.
[12:07]And when you're doing that alongside these people
[12:09]who you have these old patterns with, you know,
[12:12]your friends who you always stay up until two
[12:13]in the morning with, your friends who you play beer pong
[12:16]with, your friends who you, you know,
[12:18]lie in the sand all afternoon gossiping with.
[12:21]It's like all of a sudden having to make that shift
[12:24]is a huge adjustment.
[12:26]And you know, the responsibility piece of it
[12:29]is really interesting because I think each of these
[12:32]characters thinks they know who they're responsible for
[12:35]but they are forgetting someone else.
[12:37]So like Caroline learns that she has to be responsible
[12:42]for more than just herself and her career.
[12:44]I would say Fran has to learn
[12:46]that she can't just look out for everybody else.
[12:48]She needs to look out for herself also.
[12:50]So they all, I think they all are facing
[12:52]these kind of mismatches in terms of where
[12:55]they feel their responsibility should lie
[12:58]and where they're maybe not tending to
[13:01]the responsibilities they need to.
[13:03]So when you're talking about the construction
[13:05]of the novel, is that something that you think through
[13:08]ahead of time, like the mismatch or did it just,
[13:11]does it just happen?
[13:12]So I usually know, I usually know the big problem.
[13:18]I know like the climax, I know where I'm heading to.
[13:21]A lot of times I have a couple really like big bump
[13:25]drama scenes that I know that I'm building to
[13:28]but I don't really know exactly how I'm going to get there.
[13:30]And so for the first third of the book,
[13:33]and I'm just flying like, let's see, let's see.
[13:36]And then halfway through, I start to try and figure out
[13:39]where I'm going to get to those goalposts for it.
[13:41]And it's funny because there will be scenes
[13:43]that I'm really looking forward to writing.
[13:46]I'm like, there's a basketball scene,
[13:48]not going to say more than that.
[13:49]But I was like, I can't wait to get to the basketball scene.
[13:51]And so some of what keeps me going is being like,
[13:54]I've just set it up so I can get there, you know?
[13:57]So it's actually, it's very motivating
[13:59]to know some of the end pieces.
[14:00]But then I don't, I never know exactly how the chips
[14:04]are going to fall once I get there.
[14:06]So when did you have the idea for this book?
[14:09]And what was it about the book that you were like,
[14:12]this definitely has to be my next book?
[14:14]I remember after it was like,
[14:17]we had had our first media cocktail party
[14:21]for pineapple street.
[14:22]So before pineapple street came out,
[14:24]I went to dinner with my editor Pamela Dorman
[14:27]and I told her basically the outline of the book.
[14:30]So I knew, I couldn't,
[14:32]I didn't know exactly what the characters were,
[14:34]but I knew that I wanted to write about
[14:36]an accidental pregnancy inspired by Tom Brady
[14:40]and Bridget Moynihan's accidental pregnancy.
[14:42]A literary trope, if we had as we were all familiar with
[14:48]and then the other thing I really was fascinated with
[14:50]was I grew up in the same hometown
[14:52]or John Updyke wrote his books.
[14:54]When he wrote the book Couples in 1968,
[14:57]it was a huge scandal.
[14:59]It blew the town apart.
[15:01]I wanted to write about a writer in a small town
[15:04]that New York Times piece,
[15:06]that viral piece by Robert Colker called the Bad Art Friend
[15:10]had made a huge splash.
[15:12]Everyone in publishing was talking about it.
[15:14]You know what, what are you allowed to write?
[15:16]What are you not allowed to write?
[15:17]What's fair game?
[15:19]What's not fair game?
[15:20]That story cat person had been published in the New Yorker,
[15:23]had made a huge splash and then had kind of a fallout
[15:26]of its own.
[15:27]So those were the ideas that I knew I wanted to explore
[15:31]and I and the characters,
[15:35]some of the characters were just like there
[15:38]when I started, Bailey was there,
[15:39]when I started, Van was there when I started,
[15:41]some of the other characters sort of formed
[15:44]as I was like dreaming about the ideas.
[15:47]So cool.
[15:48]Actually, my husband just asked me if I knew that
[15:51]about cat person.
[15:52]If I knew that,
[15:53]but that's so funny.
[15:54]Like literally right before this.
[15:56]Yeah.
[15:57]Funny.
[15:58]It's not, I don't know, the universe is a great story
[16:01]with an amazing story.
[16:02]Yeah.
[16:03]Okay, so when you take apart the book
[16:06]and by the way, and I know I emailed you this
[16:09]because the ending was so perfect.
[16:11]Like it was just, I think the best last scene of a book.
[16:17]It was just so full circle
[16:18]and so satisfying and clever.
[16:21]I just loved it.
[16:22]I felt like as I told you, it was like a bravo moment.
[16:25]I was like, that was, that was perfect.
[16:27]It was just so funny.
[16:28]But anyway, I knew I wanted to get there.
[16:30]Yeah, that was, that was really great.
[16:33]Like what do you think makes a great book?
[16:35]Like when you're reading a book, what do you think it is?
[16:38]And can you even articulate it?
[16:40]Or is it just something you know when you see it?
[16:42]I mean, I think there's two different things.
[16:45]I think a lot about this question
[16:46]because of my job as a book editor.
[16:49]And I think that there are sort of two different things
[16:53]that I'm looking for.
[16:54]One of them is I'm looking for something
[16:57]that I haven't ever read before.
[16:59]And I feel like that was true with yesteryear.
[17:02]That was true with tomorrow and tomorrow.
[17:04]That was true with station 11.
[17:08]These are books where I would sit in our sales meeting
[17:12]and they'd be like, what are the comparative titles?
[17:14]And I'd be like, there's nothing.
[17:16]No, no, nobody's written this.
[17:18]There's nothing.
[17:19]With yesteryear, we could never even come
[17:21]to a real comp title because it hasn't been done.
[17:24]So I think something that I did in the video game novels
[17:28]for Gabrielle Zevan.
[17:29]Again, we were like, is it Andy weird?
[17:31]No, but it's not Andy weird.
[17:32]Is it Cavalier and Clay?
[17:33]But instead of comics, it's video, okay, maybe.
[17:35]Anyway, that to me is like the sign of a great thing
[17:39]is when it's so different, it's really hard to even express it.
[17:43]And then the other thing I'm looking for
[17:45]is a lot simpler and that is something
[17:48]that I know within the first 30 pages of reading a book
[17:50]when I am with a voice that is unput downable.
[17:54]And I think, oh, I just want to hang out with you.
[17:57]And that can be anything from someone
[17:59]who is just really funny and entertained.
[18:01]I don't publish Catherine Newman and sandwich,
[18:04]but that's one of those books where literally
[18:06]like what page two, you're like,
[18:08]I'm gonna hang out with this woman.
[18:09]Like what, you know, or I don't publish and patch it.
[18:12]But when I read Tom Lake, I was like,
[18:14]tell me what happened with the movie star.
[18:16]You know, so one of those voices that just
[18:19]reels you in and like you couldn't pay me
[18:22]to put the book down, that's really,
[18:24]that's really what I'm looking for.
[18:26]Yeah.
[18:27]It would be nice to have that every time.
[18:29]I know, right?
[18:30]Our jobs would be so much easier.
[18:34]Yeah, it would be great.
[18:36]No, it would be something we'd publish
[18:37]everything, so it would be a lot harder.
[18:38]But that's true.
[18:40]Now we just read, we were just reading a book
[18:43]and it had a lot of promise, but then we all had to whisper
[18:46]like, but feel like maybe the main character's
[18:49]a little bit annoying, you know?
[18:51]That's a tough one.
[18:52]And unless they're like so purposefully annoying
[18:55]that you-
[18:56]Right, yeah, I'm purpose anyway.
[18:58]Which is always a trick, you know,
[18:59]the whole likable narrator thing.
[19:01]That's true.
[19:02]So pretty hung up on it.
[19:03]That is true, interesting.
[19:05]Do you already have your next book lined up?
[19:07]What is your next book?
[19:08]Oh, this time I think I'm gonna-
[19:10]I think I'm gonna wait a little while to start it.
[19:13]I know big picture.
[19:15]I have the big ideas.
[19:17]But I realized that last time, you know,
[19:19]people say like, oh, you should be deep into your next
[19:21]book before you start touring for your new book.
[19:23]It'll help keep you sane.
[19:25]But for my point of view, there's really no way
[19:28]for me to be like traveling and doing events
[19:32]and then also having really productive time writing
[19:35]while also like doing my day job and parenting.
[19:37]So I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna be a little easier
[19:40]on myself this time around.
[19:41]And I think I'm gonna wait until like the fall
[19:44]to get going on it.
[19:46]That's totally reasonable.
[19:47]You don't have to grind all the time.
[19:50]No, you can take a step back in the summer.
[19:54]Also, I bet if you tell yourself,
[19:55]you're like not gonna do it.
[19:56]You're gonna like tread and cheat on yourself.
[19:58]Do you know what I mean?
[19:59]But if you're like-
[20:00]I have to do, or maybe this is my projection, but if you're like, I have to do this somewhere,
[20:04]then you'll like put it off. Yeah. Well, you hear about those writers who are like trying so hard
[20:08]to do one thing. And then for a breather, they take a little break and write something different
[20:12]and figure out, oh shoot, that's actually my book. You know, totally. Yeah. You have to follow your
[20:18]phone as a writer. Did you partner with a shampoo brand? No, I didn't know it. I'm waiting for
[20:23]someone to send me some free shampoo, but it hasn't happened yet. Okay. Let me see if I can help.
[20:28]I'll get on that, Jenny. Oh my gosh. Amazing. So if you had to just say like one or two takeaways
[20:37]from the book that you're like, I want people to remember this long after they say goodbye to my
[20:43]characters, like one of those things. Yeah. I mean, I think that one of my favorite things to explore
[20:52]in writing are I like to explore fundamentally good people who misunderstand each other and
[20:59]misunderstand themselves, but are actually trying really hard to get it right at the end of the day.
[21:06]I think that that actually is most people. I'm one of those like Sunshiney Polly, and as who
[21:12]really does, I do believe that people are good and people are trying to do right, but you know,
[21:17]we often get it wrong by mistake and we can apologize and move on. And that's kind of the
[21:22]spirit that I would like for people to take from this book. I also think that I had the really
[21:29]happy, happy event of I sent the early pages to my best friend. She lives in California now,
[21:35]but she and I grew up together. She read them and we have been just like giggling ever since
[21:41]about things that this book made us remember about times we like snuck out about times, you know,
[21:47]we went to a party and ended up on a house boat. Like it's so much fun to be able to reminisce. And so
[21:52]if this book made somebody, you know, feel more connected to one of their friends from growing up,
[21:56]that would be awesome. Amazing. Well, it was so enjoyable and thought-provoking and immersive. And of
[22:04]course, has like your great voice and wit behind all of it and that sense of humor that is like
[22:12]dry and observational and just like spot on. So thank you, Zibi. Well done. I really appreciate it.
[22:20]Thank you. All right. Thanks, Jenny. Take care. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to totally booked
[22:27]with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[22:32]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much.
[22:38]Oh, and bye the books.