Jenny Jackson, author of Pineapple Street, is back with The Shampoo Effect, out today from Pamela Dorman/Viking Books. Below, she discusses how John Updike’s Couples inspired her new novel.

I grew up in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a seaside town north of Boston famous for three things: beer, clams, and John Updike.

The celebrated author wrote his biggest books, including the Rabbit novels, while living on East Street, a few blocks from my house. Ipswich is a small town, and Updike was very much a celebrity in the midst, winning every major literary prize, appearing on the cover of Life magazine, and regularly contributing to the New Yorker.

But he wasn’t a reclusive star; instead, he was enmeshed in the social fabric of the town, playing volleyball with a big gang of friends, parenting his small children alongside a dozen other couples, and conducting messy extramarital affairs with a few of them.

In 1968, he published the novel Couples, a story of adultery, unplanned pregnancy, and partner-swapping in a small Massachusetts town, and it didn’t take much detective work for readers to figure out who he was writing about.

The book put a spotlight on Ipswich, painting a portrait of the place as a hotbed of sexual adventure, and causing a moral outcry. At the same time, the book was a cultural phenomenon, a #1 New York Times bestseller, the biggest of Updike’s career…

👉 Find Jenny Jackson’s full essay at Book Riot!