On the other hand, I had a hard time shutting it off and I think job one for a novel is to 'hook me' and The Interestings did do that. Lots of pre-release hype means that expectations are high, but this book did not totally satisfy me. I debated a lot on my rating with this book. Needs a better title, but a good read (listen) 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. 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. 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. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age 15 is not always enough to propel someone through life at age 30 not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed.

The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. It's everyone's.' ( Entertainment Weekly)Ī New York Times best-selling novel by Meg Wolitzer that has been called 'genius' ( Chicago Tribune), “wonderful” ( Vanity Fair), 'ambitious' ( San Francisco Chronicle), and a “page-turner” ( Cosmopolitan), which The New York Times Book Review says is 'among the ranks of books like Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot.' But the very human moments in her work hit you harder than the big ideas. She's every bit as literary as Franzen or Eugenides. The Interestings secures Wolitzer's place among the best novelists of her generation. With this book has surpassed herself.” ( The New York Times Book Review)

The interestings