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

Great read

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

Enjoyed the narrator and thought the text worked well as an audiobook. Meg Wolitzer is a great storyteller.

I loved this book

The characters were all very interesting, as was the development of their relationships over time.

interesting!

I loved this book. the author had such a wonderful and irreverent way of describing the everyday. the characters was very real and believable. Having grown up in New York myself, just a bit later, it was nice to visit again.

great characters

great listen. enjoyed much would highly recommend this book. great story and flow of story

Needs a better title, but a good read (listen)

I debated a lot on my rating with this book. Lots of pre-release hype means that expectations are high, but this book did not totally satisfy me. 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. And, although Wolitzer was compared to Franzen and Eugenides in Entertainment Weekly, I found her voice unique - not like anyone's else's but pretty terrific all on her own. I found myself quite "taken" with her words. So, I ultimately rounded my 3.8 up to 4 stars because I especially enjoyed Wolitzer's style.

The book covers several decades and the plot encompasses major world events (first reports of AIDS, September 11th, etc.), normal individual tragedies (autism, cancer, rape, etc.), as well as a lot of minutiae, but is ultimately driven by the characters and their evolving relationships with each other and themselves. Much of how you feel about the novel will boil down to how much you like character-driven fiction and how much you like and/or relate to the characters. So I will just relate what I most liked and didn't like and I hope this helps you make a decision.

Pros:
1. Male characters were especially nuanced. All the major male players were uniquely drawn - distinct talents, motivations, reactions, challenges, morals, physical appearance, etc. Meg Wolitzer's men were far more interesting than most "relationship fiction" men and much more interesting than the women characters.
2. Wolitzer uses NY City very effectively to set a tone as the decades change.
3. Wolitzer throws amazing metaphors and descriptors around so abundantly some of them slid right past me and I had to rewind to catch the wording. This woman can turn a phrase with the best of them and I paid more attention to the "set the scene" sections of this book than I often do because the descriptions were so unique, apropos, and entertaining. "This thin man in his 60's with the soft androgynous face that aging seemed to bring as though all the hormones were finally mixed up in a big coed box because it just didn't matter any more." Just one example - not even close to the best of 100's of "grace notes" in this book.
4. Fluid movement, not totally linear, through the decades as well as the shifting of POV kept my interest throughout the book.
5. Jen Tullock does a good job with voices and there is a fair amount of dialog. She can do male voices that won't make you wince and she makes it easy to tell who is speaking.

Cons:
1. Female characters were amazingly flat. Ash - can't help but like her, but in the way you like cotton candy. She's sweet, pretty, wispy - never a deep thought and never changes. Jules - starts out as a self absorbed teenager lacking in self confidence, always sure the grass is greener on the other side. Ends up a self absorbed middle aged woman lacking in self confidence, always sure the grass is greener... Kathy - very little information beyond surface detail in the intro teen period. Kathy comes to a crisis that clearly changes her life enormously, but, we the readers (listeners) only hear 2nd hand about Kathy after the big crisis. She drops from the immediate circle of friends and she is never a POV character. Jules provides POV for much of the novel and I found her rather unlikable and I couldn't relate to her constant angst at all.
2. All of the characters are relentlessly East Coast metropolitan, politically liberal, religiously agnostic/atheistic. That doesn't mean they won't be interesting to people who don't share that background - and I don't share that background but found the male characters very interesting - but it may make it harder to relate to these characters. This group really doesn't have a Jane Everywoman in it. For me, the single oddest thing about this group was the almost total lack of spiritual development of any kind. Even for an atheist, some existential contemplation might be expected as one approaches middle age or deals with a personal crisis. But, other than a brief encounter with the Moonies (which seemed more designed as historical reference than character development), none of these people seems to have any type of spiritual facet to their lives. We see the physical, emotional, psychological, financial, mental aspects of these characters, but never their souls.
3. Wolitzer's amazing metaphors can get a bit contrived at times and pull the listener out of the narrative. I found this particularly true during the sex scenes. Some of the fancy metaphors/similes that Wolitzer throws out there in her sex descriptions are a bit over the top and sounded overly coarse as though the author is trying to prove that she can be cleverly earthy. (This could also be my tendency to be hypercritical about sex scenes in novels.)
4. Jen Tullock reads like she was racing someone. I have NEVER heard a narrator read so fast. I did sort of adjust, but this is a bit of a challenge on the ears. Her voice is really OK, but whoa, Nelly - way too fast

If you like a character driven novel and enjoy listening to an author throw some triple flips with words, you will probably like this book. If you are a Boomer, you may enjoy the historical walk down memory lane. If you are a New Yorker, you will probably relate to the settings even if you don't relate to the characters. Not for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

And They're Off...............................

The Interestings is a traditional novel, set within the baby boomer's time setting, focusing on friendships lost and cherrished within a thirty year span. It’s not a warm or endearing story , but rather a breathtaking character study during a time when a portfolio displayed artwork not numbers. I laughed out loud and pushed the “I need to hear that again” button more in this novel than in any other audio book that I have listened to previously.


The books main character, Jules, is the best friend of the “it” couple, Ash and Ethan. The numerous other characters are on different tiers of closeness around this threesome. I relished each person's story. I loved being reminded of the uniqueness of the times.


The theme that most rang true to me (and there are numerous within) was the serendipity of life. How one thoughtless decision – one kind word – one sympathetic moment – one chance meeting – sets the path of each person’s life long providence.


The writer’s command of the subject matter and her lyrically flowing sentences makes this Meg Wolitzer novel just delicious. This is a wonderfully rich novel. Is it an enjoyable easy to listen to audio book?..... Not so much.


It’s a pity that this audiobook was narrated at breakneck speed. This lovely beautiful story will be lost on many listeners that don’t have the time and patience it takes to get involved into the story. It required my undivided attention and numerous chapter repeating to get a grasp of the large ensemble. After each break in listening, I stuggled for awhile till I could adjust once again to the narrator's frantic pace. It STILL was a book, and ending, that was well worth the credit and effort.

What does it mean to have a big life?

After her father dies of pancreatic cancer, Julie Jacobsen's Long Island mother sends her––on scholarship––to Spirit In the Woods, a summer camp mostly populated by the artsy teen spawn of privileged Manhattanites. Julie is surprised to be adopted into a circle of kids above her sophistication level, appreciated for her acerbic wit and christened "Jules" by them.

In the self-styled "Interestings" group are sister and brother Ash and Goodman Wolf; son of a Joan Baez-ish folkie, Jonah Bay; and fellow scholarship camper and aspiring cartoonist, Ethan Figman. Ash, warm-hearted, beautiful and earnestly feminist, will become Jules's best friend. Ethan is awkward and goofy, but warmhearted and hugely talented.

All of the Interestings have ambitions; Jules expresses it as wanting to have a "big life." We follow the group from their teenage days, during the Watergate era, through to their middle age, and see what happens as they grow into their adult lives, some of which are far bigger than others––at least if you're measuring by name recognition and money. As the old saying goes, though, life is what happens while you're making other plans, and we see that play out in this story.

Anchored in its time and place, the tale spans the bad old days when Manhattan was filthy and crime-ridden, the beginning of the AIDS era, the Moonies, foodies, the rise (and fall) of the yuppie and the investment banker and 9/11. All the personal landmarks are the real story, though: career achievements and disappointments, marriage, children, friendship, loss, illness, death. Biggest of all, the slow growth of the idea that happiness, or at least satisfaction, can be found in a life that isn't so big or interesting.

Audio: Jen Tullock was not a good narrator. Her voice was nasal and she often delivered character voices were in an inappropriately whiny and singsong-y style. It was grating and detracted a lot from my enjoyment of the story. During the middle of the book, there was a long period when it sounded like she had a lozenge or gum in her mouth.

Really "Interesting" and compelling story!

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

Yes, I would recommend this book. Although the main character, Jules Jacobson, is not always likeable (in her older years she can be downright whiny), I enjoyed the different characters and we learned how they grew up and what they became over the course of 40 years. Some very funny moments, as well as some very sad ones, I enjoyed how this book described life in general.

Who was your favorite character and why?

My favourite character was Ethan Figman, who was incredibly likeable and grew up to be incredibly rich and a celebrity in his own right, but this didn't affect him in terms of who he was as a person. Like all of Meg Wolitzer's characters, he wasn't just black and white though.

Have you listened to any of Jen Tullock’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I haven't listened to any of her other performances, however I really enjoyed this one. I thought that she did a great job depicting the different vocals of each character and I could really picture them in my mind.

Who was the most memorable character of The Interestings and why?

Jules Jacobson was kind of the "main" character, and so I would say she was the most memorable. Although not always likeable, and certainly not flawless, she had some good insights into her own life and the life of her close friends.

Enjoyable book

I liked listening to this book. I found the narrators voice nice to hear and added to my interest in listening. She uses voices for the characters and I found it to be a plus, whereas as with some other audiobooks I’ve found it annoying. There’s a lot of detail and musings and I liked the story.

Great Book Terrible Narrator

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Only if they were going to read it, not listen to it.

What didn’t you like about Jen Tullock’s performance?

She just "read" the book. Very flat voice but what I found most distasteful was the speed she read at. It was as though she couldn't wait to finish!

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

yes

Any additional comments?

Great story following a group of friends through the years from teenagers to their fifties.