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

Wolitzer's ideal reader is at least 50

Jen Tullock is a superior reader. I would listen to anything she reads because her performance is more like listening to someone talking. Listen to anyone reading a short story on NPR and the difference is profound. Most people do a weird kind of sing-reading where the "reading" is the antithesis to talking. Where other readers often err is in the voicing of particular characters; some readers are so bad at voicing the listener's delight in the book is regularly interrupted with cringing at a grating or strange interpretation. Tullock's voicing was almost uniformly pitch perfect. I found her an extraordinarily companionable voice; it felt like a friend telling me a long confidence.

I did reduce the speed of her reading to 85%. This might be a singular approach - maybe my own processing speed has slowed down. But if you find the narration fast - experiment with slowing it down.

I note the wide variety of reactions to this book. I'm 73, so I found the long view of life compelling. I am guessing that younger readers found the realism a little hard to take - that life is a mix of delight, bad choices and incomplete love, and it is shot through with suffering. Everybody suffers. The happy ending is necessarily incomplete. The ending is death, except that people can find sometimes find sustenance in the fact that a person made an art of living life as best as possible, or actually made art, and left it behind. As for enduring life, Wolitzer makes clear that some people give us perfect moments, sometimes over and over and over.

I found all the wrong choices and dead ends somehow reassuring, which is strange, but a testimony to the power the book's long view had over me.

Wolitzer puts Alice Miller's book, "The Drama of the Gifted Child" into fictional form, The two would make an interesting pairing. Another productive pairing might be with the Jeremy Irons' "Brideshead Revisited". Both books investigate the torque and seduction that our encounters with extreme wealth places on our lives. Of course, given that the book revolves around a rape, the book is also an investigation of the levels of seduction, especially the line between seduction and rape. Inevitably, the rape makes makes secrecy and lying a central theme in the book.

An interesting exploration is that of Susanna Bay, the failed folk singer who joins the Moonies; one is compelled to make the comparisons with any artist or any person who gets drawn into a cult. Wollitzer also explores the idea of re-invention in life, and the way people can, in their late-mid-life slowly deepen and change.

This book has a treatment of child endangerment that is new to me in literature - that of a 12 year old being given psychotropics. I am familiar in life with adults giving very young children alcohol and I have even encountered parents who have given children marijuana in order to dampen the child's unmanageable hyperactivity. Another view of drugs is through Dennis, who needs drugs to deal with pervasive depression, but for whom drugs are an only imperfect solution.

I found the title a stumbling block which caused me to overlook the book when it first came out, but I have nothing to suggest in its place. I think some people are off-put by the unfamiliarity and elitism of the arts camp that dominates the first chapter, as if the arts camp is a character all in itself. But that aspect slows down the first chapter. Finally, another stumbling block is that other characters find Jules to be wonderful, while the reader finds her imperfect, to say the least. To me, this is actually one of the things that makes the book compelling - the great double life we all lead.

I fell into this book and couldn't put it down. Again, I note that it is probably my age that found the long view so compelling. Wollitzer's ideal reader is probably at least 50, and it is no surprise to find that was her age when she wrote this book. I myself still have friends that I made in adolescence, and their friendship is of great sustenance, importance and mystery to me. Many thanks to Meg Wollitzer for this terrific and thoughtful book.

I couldn't get them out of my my mind!

Any additional comments?

I missed these characters for several weeks after I finished this wonderful book. It really stayed with me. I think it is my favorite book this year. A really fabulous book.

A lot of cursing & sexual references

Would you try another book from Meg Wolitzer and/or Jen Tullock?

No.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

The most interesting part of the story was (spoiler) when Kathy was raped. The least interesting was the whining that Jules constantly expressed.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

I liked the ups and downs of the performance of each character but felt some details could have been left out.

Was The Interestings worth the listening time?

If it had less cursing and sexual content, maybe it would have been worth the listening time to a teenager.

Any additional comments?

It just wasn't for me.

Hmmm...

A book this long needs a big ending and I don't feel that we got that. It was anti-climatic. The story was good but nothing spectacular. The narration was good.

When I was at camp...

Would you listen to The Interestings again? Why?

Probably not, the characters were good but I think I got what I was looking for on the first read.

What did you like best about this story?

I was drawn to the story because I was a kid like that, a gifted young person at different summer camps for giftedmusicians and artists. It was fun to compare experiences complete with kid/counselor/group dynamics, also to acknowledge that people move on and grow up -- some wildly successful in their art, and some not.

Fun summer reading

I enjoyed this book because it reminded me of my friends and me growing up. Just a bunch of friends who stay pretty much who they were throughout their lives. We're all supposed to grow up and live and learn, but in the end, do we? Well written and fun.

I didn't know any of them...

...but I was immediately drawn into the characters' universe. The characters were close to my age, so it felt nice to get the cultural references. I agreed with their politics, which gave me space to enjoy, maybe even love the characters.

The best part, maybe the only important thing is that this book is so well written. Ms. Wolitzer...you have a new fan. Thank you for your work.

Examination of Talent and Success

What made the experience of listening to The Interestings the most enjoyable?

The examination of talent and success was insightful and rich through the various character's perspective.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The performance was fine, except for the voice the actor used for Ash, which seemed very much out of character--an irritating "sexy baby" voice.

A perfect performance of a fantastic book

A wonderful book that’s endlessly perceptive about the course of human lives. Strongly recommend the audiobook, which features a pitch-perfect performance from Jen Tullock.

One of my favorites

This is one of those novels that’s so entertaining you could miss how finely wrought it is. Really manages to cover the variegated stories of 6 friends through half a lifetime and also be a fun summer camp novel. Narrator is perfect too.