Is The Shampoo Effect is actually a book about motherhood?I loved The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson but not for the reasons you think.
Note: This review is mostly spoiler-free except for a tiny part towards the end which I’ve flagged. On a roll with setting aside my literary tendencies and grabbing “fun beach reads” (thanks Dolly All The Time), I bought one too many books at the store that channeled fun summer energy. I got home and hit decision paralysis, so I polled my Instagram followers on what I should read next. The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson won out by a mile¹.
And…I gobbled it up. The Shampoo Effect was a perfect step-up from a pure romance read. Just literary enough, juicy, and oh-so-gossipy. It wasn’t a page-turner per se (there is no mysterious set-up and the stakes are fairly low), but my thirst for scandal knows no bounds (whose does?) and this delivered in literary form. The book is structured in third-person POV chapters, each one dedicated to a character's secrets and anxieties—aka the perfect structure for gossip and understanding how a character sees another. There were broad strokes of a theme and plot (including one “big reveal” moment), but The Shampoo Effect was mostly a character-driven romp, which is exactly the type of novel I’m loving lately (see: Lost Lambs by Madeleine Cash). The premise: Caroline Lash² is a young twenty-something woman living in NYC who hates her publishing job—one that she landed thanks to her mother, a big-name, self-absorbed parent. Feeling dissatisfied with her nepo baby life, Caroline leaves the city to ensconce herself in a quiet seaside town in Massachusetts called Greenhead for a writer’s residency. There, Caroline meets and falls in love with local Van Whittaker, a granola bar of a man whose main traits are being a Good Guy, picking up trash along hiking trails, and working as an environmental scientist. Through Van, she meets his group of local lifelong friends, all in their mid-thirties, who are in various states of domestic dissatisfaction.
Augusta, for instance, is an old-money type, whose pink house on the hill has stables for horses and whose three kids are her world. But she senses something is up with her husband, Colin, when she finds lacy underwear in between the couch cushions. Fran, meanwhile, has been surrounded by male energy all her life, cleaning up after their messes: she’s got all boys herself, and her husband RJ is a boy-man who drinks too much beer and whose one joy in life is the annual town tradition of climbing a greasy pole. Even Fran’s job in engineering means her work trips involve being surrounded entirely by dudes who just want to talk about Star Wars. Lastly, there’s Bailey, Van’s attractive, blonde high-school ex…whom he has knocked up (oops). (Bailey is a “body” whereas Caroline is a “brain,” Caroline thinks.) Things get sticky when Bailey decides to keep the baby but definitely doesn’t want to stay with Van—or does she? Caroline’s presence is messing everything up in this friend group. Their social equilibrium is thrown off kilter by this mysterious newcomer. Her alien presence must be eradicated. Meanwhile, Caroline finds their group dynamic weird and incestuous. When things get to be too much, she decides to do something that blows everything up further. And thus is the juicy set-up for this novel. And don’t get me wrong, the book is juicy. But among the dramatic reveals and betrayals, what I personally found most enjoyable about the novel was not the drama but the accurate depictions of the stages of motherhood within it. These scenes from the book were the most vivid and successful for me, and led to a more enjoyable reading experience. I’ve found that when a book doesn’t do this well and gestures vaguely at “early motherhood,” I get annoyed and have to walk away. Sell me on at least one believable scene on what it’s really like to negotiate with a three-year-old! But The Shampoo Effect nails it. Rather than leaning too saccharine or too vulgar, the book captured the messy mix of modern parenthood so well. Of course, there is the all-consuming love and tenderness (Augusta looking on at her baby, “a tiny glowworm” asleep in her sleep sack, “bum sticking up in the air.”), but there’s also the mind-numbing boredom; the unending emotional, mental, and physical labor; the domestic wrinkles it can cause; and even revulsion. There is this bit about breastmilk, for instance. When Augusta combines a few stored bottles into one, only to find they've separated into “various states of thickness,” she gives them a little shake, and gags at “the white solids sliding down the side of the plastic bottle like yogurt.” She finds one bottle of breastmilk that’s green, and shoves it “to the back of the fridge behind the lettuce” so her 18-year-old babysitter won’t see it. I laughed! I know breastmilk is the sacred sustenance by which my babies grow and have grown, but damn, I am myself revolted by the stuff sometimes, even as it comes out of my own body!! And here is a chore that most moms I know are too familiar with: the dreaded clean-out of stuff and overgrown clothes in the kids’ dressers. Wired and “miles from sleep” at two in the morning, Augusta works through the kitchen, then the kids' cup drawer—matching lids to bottoms, tossing anything with a broken straw. She cleans the front hall closet (“a place of perpetual irritation for her”,) sorting shoes into piles to donate or save, “half of them disgusting with use, half of them nearly pristine but rejected by her children for reasons sundry and various” including “one loathsome pair that shed glitter upon every wearing.” Who among us hasn’t encountered said loathsome pair? Also, there were just parts that were really, really, funny:
Most of the parents in this book clearly love their children but also grapple with the various brain-melting mini-dramas of parenting. These moments kept me turning the pages as I saw myself reflected in each parent in different ways. I say most of the parents because The Shampoo Effect offers a look at the other end of the parenting spectrum, too. The one where instead of sacrificing yourself to it completely to the point where you subsume all your own needs (Augusta, Fran), you’re so self-absorbed that your parenthood barely registers against your own ambition (Bailey, Caroline’s mom). Of course, I think for most of us, the reality lies somewhere in between, a constant push and pull.
I know not all of my readers are looking for motherhood fodder in their books, so if there’s another good reason to read The Shampoo Effect, it’s because the author’s experience in publishing leads to some hilarious, insidery depictions of how that world works. (Jenny Jackson is vice president and editorial director of fiction at Alfred A. Knopf.) I loved that she really leaned into it rather than vaguely gloss over it to avoid a certain level of drama in her own life. (Very meta.) Gwendolyn, Caroline’s mother, is being honored with a “contribution to the literary community” award and is furious about it. She reads it as a consolation prize. (“Caroline, that is like congratulating Donald Trump on having Trump Tower named after him.”) The fall awards season, to her, is filled “with near limitless opportunities for feeling snubbed.” She argues that it reserves its real prestige awards for literary novelists with “structurally playful” books that make up for “no coherent plot,” while commercial writers who actually sell books get patronized instead of respected.
LOL! But also: so much to unpack there. Jenny Jackson obviously has some thoughts. (As an aside, is it time for the book world to get its own Golden Globes? MTV Moonman trophies? People’s Choice Awards? What is the equivalent?)
The book is clearly commenting on what it means to create art and publish a book today— and the impact of that art on real life. I did find that this theme came across as too heavy-handed, especially towards the end of the book, but no spoilers in my review, so I’ll leave it at that.³
Potential tiny spoiler below One of the biggest critiques I’ve seen - and that I personally had with the book until about five seconds ago - is that the ending is too “tidy.” Without revealing too much, the social equilibrium of Greenhead is reset by the end, more or less. I appreciated this decision made by the author to make a point: People don’t really change. They are most comfortable settling back into their respective places, even if it means sweeping some dust under the rug. The mental image I have is a snow globe that’s shaken up, all the pieces eventually floating back lazily to the bottom. The Shampoo Effect could have gone in a different, darker direction. But dark doesn’t sell, especially in the summer. And who better to construct a tidy, popular beach read than a publishing executive herself?
⭐️ In short: This book was a delicious, smart, fast four-star read for me (and made me wish I had read Jackson’s Pineapple Street). If you enjoyed the show Four Seasons starring Tina Fey, you might like this book, as the premise is pretty similar. Don’t read this if: you need a character you’d like to root for, or need a propulsive plot. P.S. I couldn’t fit this anywhere into my review, but I had to chuckle at this Substack dig:
Have you read or are planning to read The Shampoo Effect? What did you think? And does a beach read have to have a tidy or happy ending, in your mind?
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1
(followed closely by Nora Off Script, but I needed a break from Annabel Monaghan so I could come back fresh)
2
I’m now realizing that Caroline Lash sounds an awful lot like Madeleine Cash. Coincidence or not?!
3
A total aside, books leading to IRL fallout also reminds me of the recent book gossip about the new Rachel Cusk book, Life of M, which is supposedly about a veiled portrait of Natalie Portman’s life. 👀👀👀 You're currently a free subscriber to Downtime. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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