Every tight group of friends runs on rules nobody ever said out loud, and nobody notices them until an outsider walks into one. In Jenny Jackson's The Shampoo Effect, a witty contemporary novel of friendship and midlife drift, that outsider is Caroline Lash. She arrives in the seaside town of Greenhead, Massachusetts, and falls for Van Whittaker almost on sight. He wears fleece, picks up litter wherever he goes, lives for his kayak, and has an eager, goofy charm that makes the fast romance easy to believe. Van also comes with a childhood circle that has never had to make room for anyone.
That circle is the real subject, and Jackson sketches its members quickly. Bailey is Van's ex, the one people orbit without quite deciding to. Augusta comes from old money and wears her snobbery comfortably. Fran has run out of patience for men in general. Colin and RJ are in the mix as partners. They've known one another since they were kids, they spend summers outdoors with their own children underfoot, and they've built a private language of habits and loyalties that Caroline can't read. The novel is funny about how exclusive that feels from inside, and how bruising it feels from outside.
Caroline has her own reasons for wanting a new start. Her mother is a famous novelist, and Caroline has never been able to tell whether her career belongs to her or to her mother's name. A short story in the New Yorker and an eighteen-month writing fellowship in Greenhead give her a chance to find out. That gives the book a human center it might have lacked if it were all gossip: a young woman trying to stand on her own, who lands in a crowd that has never had to explain itself to anyone.
Then Bailey turns out to be pregnant with Van's baby, and the balance goes. Caroline gets pushed to the edge of the group, and what she does in response drags long-buried secrets into the open and gets the whole town talking. I'll leave the mechanics there. What interests me more is the title. A second wash of shampoo foams up bigger than the first, thanks to what the first round left behind, and Jackson applies that to people. One small moment lands on top of years of unspoken resentment, and suddenly there is far more lather than anyone planned. It's a sharp way to explain why a single announcement can upend years of easy friendship.
What Jackson does best is make you feel two things about these people at once. They are in their thirties and still behave like the kids who ran the town, and their insecurity keeps new people out. You want to shake them. You also feel for them, because the clinging so obviously comes from fear. The tone is gossipy and often very funny, a little ridiculous in places, with enough sharp observation underneath to keep it from floating off. These characters make questionable choices and treat each other carelessly, and the book lets them be morally messy without pretending otherwise. Van, for his part, is more appealing in the early banter than he is as a partner who shows up for Caroline.
The story rotates among four points of view: Caroline, Bailey, Augusta, and Fran. It's a generous approach, since nobody gets to be the lone villain, but it asks for patience. Expect a few chapters of sorting out who is who. Caroline is the natural anchor, and when the book spends time away from her, some of the energy goes with her. A few of the side characters come across as thin, and the middle stretch can drift. Augusta's thread is the most interesting of the lot and the one I wanted more of. She seems to travel the furthest, and she deserves more pages. The late reveals are also easy to see coming, so they land softly.
Why you should read
- Book-club fiction about a close friend group
- Readers who liked Pineapple Street
- Seaside summer reading with some substance
- Messy, funny stories about growing up late
What to expect
- Four rotating points of view
- Gossipy, funny tone with sharper moments
- A large cast that takes a few chapters to sort
- A slower middle and late reveals that are easy to guess
- A hopeful, growth-minded finish
Still, the book settles somewhere warmer than its sharpest scenes suggest. Under the beach-read surface, Jackson is asking when loyalty to your past turns into a way of refusing to grow up. The fallout is how she answers it, since nobody in the group gets through the summer without taking a harder look at themselves.
