The Interestings

A Novel

By: Meg Wolitzer

Narrated by: Jen Tullock

Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

“Remarkable.... With this book [Wolitzer] has surpassed herself.” (The New York Times Book Review)

"A victory.... The Interestings secures Wolitzer's place among the best novelists of her generation.... She's every bit as literary as Franzen or Eugenides. But the very human moments in her work hit you harder than the big ideas. This isn't women's fiction. It's everyone's." (Entertainment Weekly)

A 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."

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 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. 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.

©2013 Megan Wolitzer (P)2013 Penguin Audio

Nurture VS Nature -- Art vs Love -- Friendship

What three words best describe Jen Tullock’s performance?

She made annoying characters almost unbearable annoying.
Note to actors: When a character is whining do not whine!

If the book weren't so good I would have stopped listening.

What a great read!

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

"The Group" meets "Meatballs."

Any additional comments?

What an all-around great story! It explores summer camp friendships with sophistication, following a coterie of "Interesting" East-Coast characters from their teen years through adulthood. Not at all sappy or melodramatic, Woltizer weaves a gripping tale, and Jen Tullock's interpretation is spot on. I happily hung onto every word till the end.

Talented Narrator Occasionally Overdoes It

If you could sum up The Interestings in three words, what would they be?

Money. NewYork. Friends.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Interestings?

The moment where Dennis breaks down and hollers at Jules for being overly obsessed with her history at Spirit in the Woods — and observes that what she's really missing is not money or attention or talent, but her own youth. And the expansive possibility that always comes with that territory.

What does Jen Tullock bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Tullock does voices brilliantly. She's clearly a trained actor, and she brings a distinct personality to each character in the book. I found myself starting to speak like her after a few days of listening to this, with her ironic-fast patter. But all her female characters except Jules sound like total idiots.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Pride & Prejudice: The 21st-Century New-York-City Adaptation

Any additional comments?

I definitely felt like Tullock brought a lot to this listening experience, and mostly that was good. I just wish she would give the same nuance to the female characters that she does to the men: Ash in particular sounded like a vapid Real Housewives Of X, when she's not really depicted that way by Wolitzer.

A rich experience of the fullness of life

this story and the characters are so finely drawn, you will become a part of this world, returning again, as if to your own childhood friends.

Six Lives, Together Interesting

Meg Wolitzer takes the structure of the 19th-century novel, following her characters from (near) birth to their inevitable end, and throws in a monkey wrench—a complication made clear in the title: sometimes an individual life isn’t all that interesting.

We meet the six ‘interestings’ in the early 1970s at a summer camp for artistic teens. Five of the six youngsters are privileged, while the sixth—Jules Jacobson—attends the camp on scholarship and remembers this period as the most important and most interesting of her life. We see what transpires after their first summer together primarily from Jules’s point of view, but also occasionally from the point of view of the other five characters. Two of the six become wealthy and influential, two go underground, and Jules and the sixth, the son of a famous folk singer, choose to pursue an ordinary instead of an artistic life. Despite their choices and fates, all six face the same mundane life challenges we all do—relationships, sex, money, career, illness, and death. But Life Itself—with the AIDS epidemic, technological advances, and 9-11 in New York City—remains large, and grand, and interesting over the course of the ‘interestings’ lives.

Jen Tullock reads "The Interestings" with an appropriate mix of irony and urgency. In many ways, because of its classical structure, "The Interestings" makes an ideal audiobook; it’s impossible to become lost in the unfolding of its time.

You'll Love It!

The vulnerability of youth.

This book has stayed with me quite a while--touched me personally. Ethan and Jules and Ashe.

So good

Loved this book! I was immersed in the language and the very relatable qualities of the characters. The narration was enjoyable as well! I’ll be reading/listening to more from this author.

LOVED IT

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would recommend this book to any baby boomer who loved summer camp for sure, for sure for sure. This book took me back in time to the wonderful summers I spent learning about life and people.

What other book might you compare The Interestings to and why?

I could compare it to Gone Girl because I absolutely did not want either of these books to end. Now I'll have to settle for a while because I know how hard it is to find just right books like these.

Not so interesting all the time

Ok I remained loyal to the book because I got into the story and wanted to find out more of the character's story but it seems that only Ethan's storyline sprung up. It was ok

An engaging immersion into a self-absorbed circle

Jules is a worthy emissary into a 37 year exploration of the intertwined lives of a band of six people who meet as adolescents at an artsy camp in the Berkshires. In truth, two of the characters soon fall by the wayside, two maintain secondary roles and the heart of the story is that of Jules and Ethan, intellectual soul mates (though only one of the two holds romantic feelings for the other). That they are the two from humble economic backgrounds only serves to make them more "interesting".
The story slows at times in swirls of angst and stews of introspection and second-guessing. But there are just enough points of conflict and intrigue, twists and turns of emotion to keep the plot moving. Jules is a compelling character who makes the novel special. At first I felt a bit frustrated that no one fully voiced the obvious truth about the character Goodman, but that was crafted as a conclusion that only the reader/listener could rightly and 'clearly' come to.
The flat voices the narrator chose for some of the characters was initially quite off-putting, but I got used to them.