From bestselling author Meg Wolitzer a dazzling, panoramic novel about what becomes of early talent, and the roles that art, money, and even envy can play in close friendships.The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge.
The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules’s now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken.
Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.
468 pages (April 2013)
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Author Webpage
Meg Wolitzer in Conversation with Delia Ephron (New York Society Library):
Meg Wolitzer reads from The Interestings at Eat, Drink & Be Literary (BAMorg):
Meg Wolitzer at The Moth: First Love, Long Island 1975:
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Title Read-alikes: The Ensemble by Aja Gabel; Invincible Summer by Alice Adams; Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam; Two Across by Jeffrey Bartsch; Expectation by Anna Hope; Close to Hugh by Marina Endicott; Freedom by Jonathan Franzen; Trust Exercise by Susan Choi; Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante; Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; Where'd You Go Bernadette? by Maria Semple; The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt; and Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt.
This story is just what it says: Interesting! The characters are so well-developed and the story never gets boring. No matter how much or how little talent and/or money one has, there will always be problems -- and redemption.
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