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The Interestings
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Jen Tullock
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
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Author-read Books
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By: Toni Morrison
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.
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Kenya Curtis is only eight years old, but she knows that she's different, even if she can't put her finger on how or why. It's not because she's black - most of the other students in the fourth-grade class at her West Philadelphia elementary school are, too. Maybe it's because she calls her father - a housepainter-slash-philosopher - "Baba" or because her parents' friends gather to pour out libations "from the Creator, for the Martyrs" and discuss "the community".
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Loved It!!!
- By ayodele higgs on 05-20-15
By: Asali Solomon
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Wilde Lake
- A Novel
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney, Nicole Poole
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Luisa "Lu" Brant is the newly elected - and first female - state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her widower father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. It's not the kind of case that makes headlines, but peaceful Howard County doesn't see many homicides.
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In a word saccharine and boring
- By Rena on 05-12-16
By: Laura Lippman
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The Road Home
- By: Ford Michael Thomas Ford
- Narrated by: Blake Somerset
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When a car accident leaves photographer Burke Crenshaw in need of temporary full-time care, he finds himself back in the one place no forty-year-old chooses to be--his childhood bedroom. There, in the Vermont home where he grew up, Burke begins the long process of recuperation, and watches as his widowed father finds happiness in a new relationship that's a constant reminder of everything Burke wants and lacks. Exploring local history, Burke discovers an intriguing series of letters from a Civil War soldier to his fianc.
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No need to check your scepticism at the door!
- By Orlando on 08-23-13
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The Unspeakable
- And Other Subjects of Discussion
- By: Meghan Daum
- Narrated by: Meghan Daum
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide", Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital.
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Complaining about her dead mom.
- By Erik Hermansen on 11-23-14
By: Meghan Daum
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Member of the Family
- My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties
- By: Dianne Lake, Deborah Herman
- Narrated by: Dianne Lake
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In this poignant and disturbing memoir of lost innocence, coercion, survival, and healing, Dianne Lake chronicles her years with Charles Manson, revealing for the first time how she became the youngest member of his Family and offering new insights into one of the 20th century's most notorious criminals and life as one of his "girls". While much has been written about Charles Manson, this riveting account from an actual Family member is a chilling portrait that recreates in vivid detail one of the most horrifying chapters in modern American history.
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Dianne sets the record straight . . . Finally.
- By POLLY POIZENDEM on 11-18-17
By: Dianne Lake, and others
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Here's the Story
- Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice
- By: Maureen McCormick
- Narrated by: Maureen McCormick
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Marcia Brady, eldest daughter on television's The Brady Bunch, had it all. But what viewers didn't know about the always sunny, perfect Marcia was that offscreen, her real-life counterpart, Maureen McCormick was living a very different - and not so wonderful - life. Maureen tells the shocking and inspirational true story of the beloved teen and the woman she became.
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Gripping
- By Chris on 08-12-14
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Nearly Normal
- Surviving the Wilderness, My Family and Myself
- By: Cea Sunrise Person
- Narrated by: Cea Sunrise Person
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In her best-selling memoir North of Normal, Cea wrote with grace about her unconventional childhood - her early years living in a tipi in Alberta with her pot-smoking, free-loving counterculture family. But her struggles do not end when she leaves her family at the age of 13 to become a model. Honest and daring, Nearly Normal reveals the many ways that Cea's unconventional childhood continues to reverberate through the years.
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This one is just not for me
- By Pamela Plimpton on 03-15-19
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I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
- A Memoir
- By: Nadja Spiegelman
- Narrated by: Nadja Spiegelman
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.
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Aweful
- By Haley Abreu Kling on 07-05-17
By: Nadja Spiegelman
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She Regrets Nothing
- A Novel
- By: Andrea Dunlop
- Narrated by: Rachel Dulude
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Laila Lawrence becomes an orphan at 23, the sudden loss unexpectedly introduces her to three glamorous cousins from New York who show up unannounced at her mother's funeral. The three siblings are scions of the wealthy family from which Laila's father had been estranged long before his own untimely demise 10 years before. Two years later, Laila has left behind her quiet life in Grosse Point, Michigan to move to New York City, landing her smack in the middle of her cousins' decadent world.
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Good Listen
- By Vallena on 02-19-18
By: Andrea Dunlop
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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32 Candles
- A Novel
- By: Ernessa T. Carter
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Davie—an ugly duckling growing up in small-town Mississippi—is positive her life couldn’t be any worse. She has the meanest mother in the South, possibly the world, and on top of that, she’s pretty sure she’s ugly. Just when she’s resigned herself to her fate, she sees a movie that will change her life— Sixteen Candles. But in her case, life doesn’t imitate art.
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2 High Fives - for Monkey Night
- By Nevada on 10-03-12
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Finding Fish
- A Memoir
- By: Antwone Q. Fisher
- Narrated by: Thomas Penny
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his midteens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how, out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope, an artist was born.
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This book will not disappoint you.
- By Joseph on 10-16-16
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A must HEAR!
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India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero. Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there’s more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do—she tells a journalist the truth: it’s a bad movie.
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Interesting story but horrible language
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What listeners say about The Interestings
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Betsy Anne
- 06-30-18
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.
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- Penny
- 08-23-13
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.
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- Tamela
- 06-21-13
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.
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- RSS
- 02-27-15
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.
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- Jennifer
- 09-18-13
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.
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- MG
- 08-11-14
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.
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- Arthur Wayu Kennedy
- 09-18-17
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.
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- Gilda P
- 10-06-13
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.
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- Andrew Reilly
- 08-26-20
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.
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- js
- 11-11-22
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.
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