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Spilling secrets and small-town adultery in The Shampoo Effect

July 4, 2026 · 27 min

Show notes

For years Jenny Jackson worked as an editor for some of the biggest authors in the publishing game. Eventually, she took what she had learned as an editor and applied it to writing a book of her own.

The result was a bestselling novel, and a new career as an author. Her new novel, The Shampoo Effect, took inspiration from a sexy, sixties novel about small-town adultery. It’s the story of a young woman who finds her way deep into a close circle of friends, and then writes all about them in a revealing New Yorker story. Plus, we revisit the late writer Gail Bowen’s Proust Questionnaire from 2015.


Books discussed on this week's show include:

Couples by John Updike

The Shampoo Method by Jenny Jackson


Check us out on Instagram @cbcbooks and TikTok @cbcbooks


All episodes of The Next Chapter with Antonio Michael Downing

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