The Interestings
A sweeping American novel about friendship, talent and growing up
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
On a warm night in 1974, six teenagers meet at Spirit-in-the-Woods summer camp. They smoke, drink, talk and decide that they are, and will remain, the Interestings.
Decades later, their lives have not unfolded equally. Jules has traded acting dreams for a more practical adulthood. Ethan’s animated creation has made him famous and wealthy. Ash, Jonah, Cathy and Goodman carry their own gifts, secrets, disappearances and losses. As chance and envy reshape the group, the intensity of adolescence gives way to the harder question of what friendship can survive.
Generous and psychologically acute, The Interestings is an American coming-of-age novel like no other; exploring the intricacies of creativity, money and ambition when they come into contact with lifelong friendship.
For readers looking for book club fiction with sweep and emotional intelligence, Meg Wolitzer follows the people we once wanted to become and the lives we actually make.
‘A truly great novel about friendship, and how it deepens and changes over the years’ David Sedaris, author of Me Talk Pretty One Day
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the "nefarious, thoroughly repulsive" summer of 1974, 15-year-old Julie Jacobson, "an outsider and possibly even a freak" from the suburbs, gets a scholarship to an arts camp and falls in with a group of kids the aptly self-named "Interestings." Talented, attractive, and from New York City, to Julie they are "like royalty and French movie stars." There Julie, renamed Jules, finds her place, and Wolitzer her story: the gap between promise and genuine talent, the bonds and strains of long friendships, and the journey from youth to middle age, with all its compromises, secrets, lies, and disparities. One member of the group, Jonah, is the son of a famous folk singer, and another, Ethan, becomes an extremely successful animator, and another Interestings member whose brother-in-law is accused of raping a girl in the group, flees his court date and disappears. Meanwhile, Jules, the character Wolitzer focuses on, becomes a therapist, marries a nice guy with no interest in being as "interesting" as her camp friends, and copes with jealousy and not having enough money in New York City. While Wolitzer (The Ten-Year Nap) is adept at switching between past and present, and showing the different fears that dog Jules at different ages, the problem is that the Interestings are never quite as interesting as this 464-page look at them requires them to be.
