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    The Interestings
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    The Interestings
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    The Interestings
    Audiobook15 hours

    The Interestings

    Written by Meg Wolitzer

    Narrated by Jen Tullock

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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 fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 9, 2013
    ISBN9781101605103
    Unavailable
    The Interestings
    Author

    Meg Wolitzer

    Meg Wolitzer’s novels include The Female Persuasion; Sleepwalking; This Is Your Life; Surrender, Dorothy; and The Position. She lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for The Interestings

    3.5/5

    870 ratings132 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I get that the Great American Novel will probably feature middle class white people with decidedly First World problems, but when I'm more focused on the blandness of the characters than the quality of the work it's hard to consider this book a candidate for the title.

      This is sub-Franzen family fluff. The (sorta-)joke at the beginning is that this group of middle-class white people adopt the title "The interestings" themselves like Michael Scott buying himself the World's Best Boss mug. The joke is on them, though, as none of them become significantly more interesting during the course of their unfulfilling lives.

      Nicely written, but to no real purpose. It's just a novel and not a terribly interesting one.
    • 4/5
      I wrote a review earlier, but I wrote it as an update and exceeded 100 characters, so it got lost in the ether.

      This is the most slice-of-lifey book I've read in a long while. And when I read something with this level of realism, I find myself wondering a lot about the author's intent. Because it's certainly engrossing reading it as someone's life story, but I have to keep reminding myself it's a work of fiction. So why did the author make the choices she did, in the plot and setting? Why are the characters the way they are? How much of it is autobiographical? I can certainly see some of what she is trying to say about youth and adulthood, and about the class divide. But a lot of the story runs on its own internal logic, and it's hard to see outside of it at times.
    • 5/5
      A story about friends who meet as teens at a summer camp for the arts in the Berkshires. The story follows the fortunes of the characters from their first meeting through their fifties. I enjoyed following their stories, even if at times I was dismayed by them.
    • 3/5
      This is my review. Where does it show up?
    • 3/5
      The final line of the book basically sums up my opinion of it: "...a strange and endless cartoon loop that you couldn't stop watching, because, despite all you knew by now, it was still so interesting."The book didn't go anywhere and it didn't do anything. The characters grew up and changed over time, but there was no excitement in the book. My favorite parts were about their time at camp, but there weren't enough of them and they were more of a prologue than the meat of the story.I'm glad I had the audio version of this book because I probably wouldn't have made it through the physical version.
    • 5/5
      At age fifteen, Jules Jacobson unexpectedly ends up spending the summer of 1974 at a summer camp for arty teenagers, called Spirit-in-the-Woods where she is invited to join an exclusive circle of attractive, talented teens who dub themselves “the Interestings.” Being admitted to this tight-knit group releases Jules’ previously undiscovered comedic talent, instantly transforming her from boring “Julie” into funny, witty “Jules.”The Interestings spans almost four decades of Jules’ life, during which she remains in touch with friends from Spirit-in-the-Woods. Jules – ordinary, plain-looking Julie from the suburbs of New York whose perfectly ordinary father had just died – couldn’t believe she could be admitted into their glittering New York City life after the intensity of that first camp summer had ended, but somehow she was.Pondering how beauty, money, fame, power, class, love, friendship, luck, and – above all, creative talent or insufficient talent – factor into a person’s life, Jules envies and frets over her closest friends’ careers, marriages, children, and artistic productivity, even as she lives her own New York City life. There is a perfect balance of humor and seriousness throughout the novel.Exploring the idea of creative talent – how it’s recognized, how it’s used, how it can be stunted, how you may not have enough – and with realistic characters who don’t always behave as expected, this novel of manners rises above the pack of what you might think of as ordinary New York City literary fiction (obsessive, neurotic, and self-absorbed).Read complete review at Bay State Reader's Advisory blog.
    • 1/5
      Not my cup of tea, which I suspected but needed to confirm because I keep picking up her books, reading the cover, and putting them down again.
    • 4/5
      I wish the author has spent more time with the characters at camp. I did not really like the characters, did not feel the strong ties that would have kept them all together. For me the portion of the book that took place during summer camp was the strongest and rang the truest, but sadly it was the shortest. After that I was just reading to finish the book.
    • 5/5
      I really cared about the characters in this book. They were very real to me, and I liked them.
    • 4/5
      The novel starts slowly with adolescent angst at summer camp in up state New York in the 1970's. The camp encourages creativity and ungainly Ethan Figman is the creative one hanging out in the animation shed perfecting his cartoon characters who inhabit Finland and will eventually become a national touch stone. There is new love, a secret, and growing up and coming to terms within this group of "Interestings" , the group that came together at Spirit in the Woods camp. Wolitzer knows how to build characters and is an incredibly perceptive author. I just foundher this year and will read more.
    • 4/5
      Good book, nice writing. Had some good twists and turns.
    • 4/5
      2013. Meg Wolitzer's stunning achievement here is to get me to read, with intense pleasure, a book about people and situations that seem utterly mundane to me, and which, had someone tried to describe the plot to me- I doubt I would ever have wanted to read. Yet it was a great book. It features a group of teenagers who meet at art camp in the seventies and go on to be lifelong friends. The rich character development made me like almost everyone in the book despite their foibles. It follows them for 40 years so you might say the scope is sweeping, if it weren't so narrowly confined more or less to marriage and friendship, with some side trips to depression, cancer and death. It is almost too real. I feel sort of scarred by it, as if I didn't want to see life so clearly. No rose-tinted glasses here, oh boy!
    • 4/5
      I heard Meg Wolitzer interviewed by Pamela Paul in relation to this book on the NY Times Book Review podcast. At first I thought this might be a good book for me, but then as the interview progressed I decided not to put it on my wish list after all. A couple of months later I was looking in my local library for Wolitzer's "The Wife" and I saw this book. I couldn't remember why I had decided against it, so I borrowed it! Well, I'm still not really certain how I feel about it. It did have some elements that really drew me in. I related very much to the era and some of the issues, but there were plenty of times when it seemed that Wolitzer was going through a list of issues to include. A number of these didn't seem to be dealt with at appropriate depth and seemed instead to be token elements of the story. The tension between the wealthy and the not-so-rich friends was particularly well developed, I thought.I also loved a lot of both the inner and voiced dialog of relationships. But the Moonies incident seemed bizarre and superficial. I was a little disappointed, but I haven't given up on Meg Wolitzer by any means. I'm still looking for "The Wife".
    • 4/5
      About 150 pages in, I realized there was not going to be a real plot in The Interestings, nothing exciting or overly shocking had happened yet, and it didn't seem likely at this point that the author would take it in that direction. I almost put it down, I was bored with the story. But the characters were intriguing, and I felt drawn to continue for a bit longer. I'm glad I did.

      This isn't a book about an event, a crime or something that needs figuring out. It's a story about some kids who met through the chance of being in the same place at the same time, and the things they went through separately before they met, the things they experienced together, and their lives after, which weave together and apart over and over. That may not sound very special, or interesting. But it really really is.

      I would love to read Meg Wolitzer's other books.
    • 4/5
      Thoughtful adult fiction - examining the interconnected relationships between a group of friends who meet every year at summer youth camp for the arts. Definitely East coast kind of landscape with much of their adult lives taking place in NY City.
    • 2/5
      At first I found myself really into this story and then Julie (refuse to call her Jules) started to grate on me. As years went on and the characters aged I got more and more aggravated with how stuck at camp she was and how immature she was. I think this story was supposed to make the reader feel this way. When Dennis lets into Julie for declining the 5 year camp job I was so happy to see that someone finally called her on her shit. I mean, Goodman did a couple of times and he certainly liked to mess with her but this chick needed a reality check. The ending was sad, and not expected and I'm not sure yet if i liked it. This was a long listen too, I wonder how it would have felt if I was reading it.
    • 3/5
      Depressing
    • 1/5
      The Borings.
    • 3/5
      Possible spoilers. Loved the character development over the course of the book. Was kind of hoping Julie would drop her obsessions and simply be friends but I suppose that was too much to ask. Her life long infatuation with these friends and her camp made me wonder what it would take to shake her out of her obsessive rut.
    • 2/5
      More like "The UnInerestings".
    • 4/5
      The Interestings would have been more interesting but it was much too long for the content of the story.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book so, so much. It's about a group of people who first meet at an artsy summer camp in the 1970s. We follow their lives and their relationships, family-saga style, into the present day, and learn what becomes of talent and what becomes of friendship as we age. It's more or less an ensemble cast, although much of the focus is on Jules Jacobson, the least talented and most ordinary of the self-proclaimed Interestings. She quickly and wisely gives up her dreams of being an actress, makes a living as a therapist and marries a nice guy who is chronically depressed. She occasionally envies her best friend Ash, whose modest talent is propped up by family wealth and by her association with her husband Ethan Figman, a hugely successful animator whose advances Jules spurned when they were at camp.With the exception of two very dramatic plot points, this isn't an action-filled story, just very well-drawn, likeable and yes, interesting characters. Don't tell Claire Messud, but I wanted to be friends with these characters, and I hated for the book to end.
    • 2/5
      The story is about a group of kids who become friends at a summer art camp and dub themselves "The Interestings." OMG I love coming of age stories and these are artistic kids too! I was pumped. After we meet them they grow up and...don't do very many interesting things. The story dragged on and on but I have a pretty strict finish-it-if-I-start-it policy because I'm an optimist and always think the story can come around at the end. Not the case here. In addition, one of my favorite characters didn't even get a wrap-up at the end. Boo.I wanted so badly to like this book but I just didn't.
    • 2/5
      Couldn't even finish reading it. It was slow paced and mundain. There was nothing "interesting" about it. I tried really hard to like this book, but just couldn't get through it.
    • 4/5
      The Interestings were kind of non-interesting a lot of the book. Though it was a very good book. Well written with passages that sing. Some of the characters in the group of Interestings were inconsequential. Jules, major character, neither attractive nor talented, she possessed a sense of humor that kids usually do not have. Would recommend.
    • 4/5
      I am not sure I understand the reviews that take issue with The Interestings' supposed lack of story. I found the characters and story completely engrossing. The story may not be deep or particularly historically significant, but this book is very readable and does a great job of capturing the head space of the late boomer generation in North America from adolescence to middle age. It was a nice thick book to sink my teeth into for an enjoyable few days.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the artful way the author moved through time and characters to tell the stories of the young people who meet at an arts camp one summer. Because it was not told in a linear fashion, it avoided the typical generational story telling. Lives don't always have happy endings and people have flaws, and this novel felt honest and true - dealing with all the ramifications of fears, inadequcies, and trust. I've made it sound depressing, but it truly was not.
    • 4/5
      The Interestings surpassed my first impression of a novel which follows the life of campers who meet as teenagers. My daughter went to a summer camp for 10 years and at 41 still maintains the friendship of her fellow camp mates. I believed that the novel would follow the lives of the campers some who would become famous; predictable but not the main focus of the novel.The author's focus is on the campers and draws images which the reader can imagine the thoughts and actions of each character. To be honest, I did not care for any one the campers but their story is so compelling as the author spins their individual tales. The most likable character in the novel is Dennis, the husband of the most ordinary of the main characters. As one approaches their senior years, one will glorify their youth and can not seem to understand that you can not relive the past. This book is a study in friendship in the real world. The read is slow but an in-depth one which will enhance your look on life.
    • 5/5
      Jules Jacobson is a fifteen-year-old who just lost her father. Her mother sends Jules to a performing arts camp, hoping to get her away from the sadness. There Jules meets and falls in with a group of wealthy, artistic teens- siblings handsome Goodman and beautiful Ash, sad, introverted guitar player Josh, dancer Cathy and witty, geeky Ethan. They become a tight knit group and their lives become entwined until an incident occurs that threatens to tear them all apart and forces them to take sides. Ethan and Ash end up together and Ethan becomes wealthy and famous, while Jules struggles financially and artistically.As someone who came of age at the same time as Jules in the 1970s, I felt very connected to these characters. Wolitzer perfectly captures how it feels to be the outsider in a group, as well as the longing for success and what happens when the reality of your life doesn't meet the fantasy you have created. Wolitzer confronts what happens to young people when people expect too much- or not enough- from them. We all have roles that we end up playing, but what happens when they don't match up to who we really are inside?The books covers much of the characters' adult lives, so we see them fall in love, start families, have career successes and failures. There is so much here, and Wolitzer's characters feel like people we could know in our own lives. The writing is so gorgeous, and the setting of New York City is the perfect place for this group of golden ones to explore life as young adults. My favorite character is Dennis, the only one who seems to be truly authentic and honest about himself.The Interestings has been placed on many Best of 2013 lists, including Amazon's best literature and fiction, and is sure to be on many more before the end of the year.
    • 3/5
      About halfway through reading The Interestings, I started to wonder when it would get interesting and whether all the critics that had written such glowing reviews read a different book than me. Nope, this was the book that is so revered this year. But I really don't know what all the fuss is about. Wolitzer is a skilled writer, of this I have no doubt. She seamlessly moves from past to present, from different narratives with perfection. But the story? Yes, it was good but not great and certainly not brilliant. So she writes about people whose lives are not what the expected it to be when they were teenagers. Pretty much most people feel that way, we grow, we change, life happens. Friends may stay in our lives, but those lives move in different directions. Different decisions are made, there are differences in socioeconomic statuses. Not necessarily to the point of having friends that are millionaires but enough of a difference. This just makes Wolitzer observant but there wasn't any profoundness in the story. No creativity. Any skilled writer could have written this but there was nothing to make it special. Read it only if you want to be part of the hype. Otherwise, I would recommend some better novels I read this year, like Reconstructing Amelia, The Silver Linings Playbook, The Painted Girls to name a few. You won't regret it