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The Interestings

Meg Wolitzer

3.58 · Rating details · 111,050 ratings · 11,044 reviews

From bestselling author Meg Wolitzer a dazzling, panoramic novel about what becomes of early talent, and the roles that art, money, and even envy can play in close friendships.

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 f ...more

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ebook, 464 pages

Published April 1st 2013 by Riverhead Books

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Apr 21, 2013 ~✡~Dαni(ela) ♥ ♂♂ love & semi-colons~✡~ rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: pretentious-crap

This book was not Interesting (capital I or otherwise) in any way. Wolitzer wrote in such an ironic, lofty fashion that I was completely distanced from the characters. Very little actually happens in this novel, unless you count life, and that happens to all of us and does not a novel make.

Six teens meet at summer camp, and four of them remain friends for decades. The friends deal with successes and failure, various love affairs, and one scandal, which is the central plot point of the novel (ye This book was not Interesting (capital I or otherwise) in any way. Wolitzer wrote in such an ironic, lofty fashion that I was completely distanced from the characters. Very little actually happens in this novel, unless you count life, and that happens to all of us and does not a novel make.

Six teens meet at summer camp, and four of them remain friends for decades. The friends deal with successes and failure, various love affairs, and one scandal, which is the central plot point of the novel (yet is never discussed or resolved in any meaningful way). Even though the novel spans the 70s through the present day, there is no tangible development or sense of time or place. The 70s might as well be the 90s. The "World Wide Web" is mentioned once, and that's about it. The reader never gets grounded in a setting. Even the summer camp where the friends meet, and which is supposedly instrumental to their lives, is barely sketched.

Overall, the storyline doesn't amount to much. The book plods along, and we are told over and over that so-and-so is funny or charming, but we are never shown. Jules, the central character, is supposed to be the funny one in the group, for example, but nothing she says is actually funny. I never felt like I knew her, only a caricature of her, and the caricature was not likable. Jules is wishy-washy, superficial, petty, and jealous. The more minor interesting characters, like Jonah or Cathy, aren't developed at all. Jonah is the token gay friend who has trouble forming attachments. Cathy is the token needy girl. Goodman (get it?), who is not good at all, is the burly, good-looking, dumb dude who drinks a lot (his character, on whom the main plot point hinges, is so woefully undeveloped as to be laughable).

Wolitzer is obsessed with external appearances. Ethan, who grows up to be rich and famous, is ugly, and we're told that his children are lucky not to look like him; we are told how ugly he is over and over, and Wolitzer focuses in excrutiating detail on his stockiness, his sour smell, his bad hair, his sweat, his eczema. Jules is also plain with frizzy hair. Jonah is beautiful (as is his partner, Robert Takahashi, who is infuriatingly referred to by his full name nearly every time he's mentioned as if the fact that he's Japanese-American somehow makes Wolitzer cool and multi-cultural). Ash is beautiful and fragile and basically perfect. Cathy has big hips and big breasts, and so on, ad nauseum. All the characters are strangely awkward and have an odd, abstract self-awareness that just didn't resonate as true. They all speak in a stilted tone, much like the tone of the novel, and are not fully fleshed out.

Much of the writing is clunky and heavy-handed, and the novel jumps back and forth in time between the mid-70s and the present; some of these leaps are confusing, and there is a lot of unnecessary detail.

I also don't think I've ever read less-sexy sex than what Wolitzer dished out in The Interestings. There is talk of anuses and penises and breasts, all of it at once clinical yet bizarrely juvenile. At one point, Jules watches a new love interest walk up to his loft and notices his heavy balls and the slit of his puckered anus. I'm being kind in paraphrasing here. The original is much worse, and the novel is full of such passages. Who thinks this during the excitement of a sexual moment? And why do we need to be privy to such random thoughts? Why spend two paragraphs talking about someone's anus but mention 9/11 as an afterthought in one sentence? ...more

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Jan 31, 2014 Stephen King added it · review of another edition

A group of adolescents—little more than children, really—meet at a camp where kids explore their creativity. Ethan, Jules, Cathy, Goodman, Ash: All believe they are meant for great things. This assumption of huge talent where there may be little or none lies at the heart of Wolitzer’s novel, which sweeps across a span of decades. There’s sentiment here, full and wholehearted, but little sentimentality. Like The Corrections, The Interestings addresses one of fiction’s great themes: how we make pe ...more

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Jul 14, 2013 Jeanette (Again) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

The Interestings are about as interesting as my butt dimple. The most exciting moment came when I rushed to my dictionary to check on the correct plural form for clitoris. I thought it might be 'clitori'. Or even 'clitorae'. But clitorises is the accepted form. I much prefer the correct Greek plural provided by my dictionary -- 'clitorides'. It's a word that deserves capitalization: Clitorides, Greek goddess of female pleasure. ...more

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Mar 27, 2013 Julie Christine rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2013, usa-contemporary, contemporary-fiction

I’m not certain what 44 looks like, other than what I’m presented with in the mirror each morning. The Social Security Life Expectancy calculator informs me that I’ve lived half my anticipated span. The tired maxim encourages me not to think of the years in my life, but the life in my years.

Now that I’m marooned in middle age for a spell, I’ve been thinking an awful lot about the life in the years ahead of and behind me. Have I achieved something of value in my work, my relationships? Is what I ...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Chaitra rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, contemporary-fiction, nytimes-notable-books, slice-of-life

There's a point in which one of the characters - a highly successful animator Ethan - wonders which Disney character would the protagonist Jules be and concludes that Disney doesn't make princesses like her. Wonderingly. I would have loved to point him to the nearest green-with-envy evil stepmother/stepsister. They're dime a dozen in Disney.

And that's exactly what Jules is, jealous, petty and self absorbed even after 50+ years of her life. The novel barely acknowledges this. Oh, there are a cou There's a point in which one of the characters - a highly successful animator Ethan - wonders which Disney character would the protagonist Jules be and concludes that Disney doesn't make princesses like her. Wonderingly. I would have loved to point him to the nearest green-with-envy evil stepmother/stepsister. They're dime a dozen in Disney.

And that's exactly what Jules is, jealous, petty and self absorbed even after 50+ years of her life. The novel barely acknowledges this. Oh, there are a couple of fights with her husband, but everything is patched up and hunky dory because of fortuitous circumstances. She never has to evaluate herself, never has to face her faults, not even the consequences of anything. The novel is a 460 page, bloated paean to Jules' unhealthy jealousy of her successful friends, and the unconditional acceptance and love that her friends have for her despite this. The animator still carries a torch for her, as she does for his lifestyle if not for him (oh no, she's so revolted by his ugliness that she has to mention it twice in every page). But neither her husband Dennis, nor his wife Ash ever call them out for it. It's amazing. I was disgusted and uncomfortable the entire way.

There are other characters - "The Interestings" - a smug group of six friends who meet at an art camp and form an alliance. One is dropped early during her moment of crisis, without much thought. Another is a would be interesting gay man coming out of the closet during the AIDS hey-days, gets involved with a cult and faced abuse during childhood. But "Interestings" was probably an ironic title, because this guy is marginalized. He's there, but he's a token absorbing the goodness of his lovely friends Ethan, Ash and Jules. He also has a partner called Robert Takahashi, who Wolitzer insists on calling Robert Takahashi every time his name is brought up. Everyone else is referred to by their first name, but what if we forget the Japanese-Americanness of Robert Takahashi? Moving on, Goodman, Ash's disappointing brother is the bad man of the lot. He does something hideous, takes the easy way out of running away and depending on his parents and sister who believe in him unconditionally for support. We don't see him much either, possibly because he's interesting and he doesn't have the hots for Jules.

Here I was who thought only YA books dealt with the level of pettiness and superficiality dealt with here. I mean, is it necessary to refer to Ethan as ugly every time his name comes up? Smug bitch Jules rejects him because he's ugly, and patronizingly thinks that one day he would find someone the equal of him in physicality. But the beautiful and basically perfect Ash falls for him much to everyone's surprise, but what do you know? Jules is Ethan's soulmate, for no discernible reason other than the novel telling us so. She's a terrible friend, this person. A terrible mother too, because she thinks her happy daughter is not the equal of Ash's delicate and sensitive daughter. But Jules' daughter turns out to be the best kind of daughter, never any trouble. No drama, no theatricality. How is that even possible? Had this been real life that girl would be in therapy. Towards the end of the book Ethan asks her if she felt anything on seeing Goodman again. She replies, I felt shame (because she earlier had the hots for him). But here is the real reason why she's not attracted to him anymore - not because he's a (view spoiler), that didn't bother her when she met him years earlier in Iceland, but because his face is ruined by the amount of drugs he did in the years after. How's that for deep?

Trite language, horrible characters, an over-emphasis on the silly and the unimportant, and a boring plotline. If the whole thing was an ironic indictment of Jules and by extension the Interestings, it may have worked, but it was too long and way too unfunny for that. Oh, and if you're going to have every single person in your book call your heroine funny, have her speak at least one funny line. Waste of a day in my life. I could have spent it more fruitfully envying my successful friends. ...more

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Nov 30, 2012 switterbug (Betsey) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Meg Wolitzer’s captivating new novel, set in the bustle and exuberance of New York, is a panoramic and epic drama, but a sleeper kind of epic. It gripped me by degrees, opening rather conventionally and then gradually seducing me with a fertile character development and realistic, original story. She penetrates the messiness of human lives with a spotless narrative that feels both familiar and singular. If you are drawn to human drama, you’ll soon be thoroughly hooked. This is surely the crown o Meg Wolitzer’s captivating new novel, set in the bustle and exuberance of New York, is a panoramic and epic drama, but a sleeper kind of epic. It gripped me by degrees, opening rather conventionally and then gradually seducing me with a fertile character development and realistic, original story. She penetrates the messiness of human lives with a spotless narrative that feels both familiar and singular. If you are drawn to human drama, you’ll soon be thoroughly hooked. This is surely the crown of Wolitzer’s writing career.

Six teenagers meet at a co-ed arts camp in the Berkshires in 1974 and remain in touch through the years (up to the present). A few become close intimates, and all of them maintain a lifelong bond. They each have a creative talent that they endeavor to nurture--dance, animation, architecture, theater, music. Art/creativity is the altar at which most of them strive and sacrifice to achieve artistic grace and ingenuity. But some are more successful than others in translating a talent into a career, and in identifying the difference between desire and aptitude.

Although THE INETRESTINGS is an ensemble piece, aspiring stage actress, Jules Jacobson, stands out as the moral touchstone of the novel. We wholly inhabit her head and heart. Although her life is the most recognizably routine, she resonates acutely in the narrative. Occasionally, she covets her friends’ successes, and she struggles at times to be charitable in her thoughts, but in spite of herself, Jules possesses an incorruptible archness and mettle. Artistically, she aims for a Lucille Ball comic timing, but her delivery promptly falls flat. Awkward and spontaneous, she has a tough and vulnerable elasticity that fuels the story. She’s injured, imperfect, but even at her most astray, there’s something of the shepherdess in her.

Waifish Ash Wolf, the Yale-bound dramatic actress, is sister to Goodman, the robustly masculine but lugubrious, lazy, wannabe architect. They come from privileged roots, and their NY apartment and cultured parents become a meeting place for the six friends during off-camp season.

Ethan Figman, homely and flat-nosed, is nevertheless the ambassador of the group, and the most obviously talented. His Fig Land animation/characters demonstrate the work of a genius.

Jonah Bay is the son of a famous, Judi Collins-like folksinger. He has delicately attractive features, and is quiet and thoughtful, but troubled.

Cathy Kiplinger--full-breasted and extroverted, and fearlessly sexy, came to the camp on scholarship, and dreams of a career in dance.

A seventh main character emerges, an outsider who becomes an insider, and even eclipses some of the primary group of six, but I don’t want to give anything away by even naming him or her. However, it is from this person that a new perspective of the group and its bond are viewed. The book’s power is both its sweeping scope and the magnification of everyday life. It is best to read this novel without any preparation or peek inside.

Distinctly drawn characters propel the action. You will forget that there is an author between you and the story, because rather than being “notified,” the reader sharply observes the coalescing of the characters' individual natures and the connection between the friends. There’s no skipping to contrived plot points, and the story never intrudes with an authorial voice. Both stout and potent, the narrative doesn’t rely on gimmicks or typical arcs and milestones. You engage through an accretion of details and everyday events, rather than through trumped-up epiphanies. However, one seismic event causes tremors and fissures that divide some characters and bring others together. We engage more and more as time passes and the characters grow.

Ambition, desire, success, jealousy, and envy shape the mortal coils of friendship, love, and loyalty, and figure importantly in the story, as do coming to terms with strengths and limitations. Moreover, mental health issues are addressed with keen awareness and insight. Much of the novel is a fluent progression of days and moments, strung brilliantly together. As observers, we get a ground view, and occasionally a bird’s eye view of events, but we inhabit the narrative as if we are inside the story. The novel goes back and forth in time with a fluid and seamless momentum that kept me turning the pages well into the wee hours of the night. Consummately satisfying, interesting, and more.

A+ ...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Melanie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

So. Fucking. Great.

I'm going to gush. It's going to come out all wrong. But that's ok.

There was so much soul and perceptiveness in this genius novel that I don't really know what to say other than "go read it now".

What happens to talent over time? What happens to teenage friendships over time? What happens to passion and ideals and dreams over time?

This novel will fill your heart to the brim and break it like a twig all at the same time.

I will echo another Goodreads friend and say that it is ...more

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Dec 18, 2013 Elaine rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

I wanted to like this book much more than I did. I was sucked in by the opening chapters, a group of friends, a summer camp much like my own, only half a generation older than me. I even recognized the types: the serious beautiful girl, the nerdy but well loved creative boy, the awkward girl making her way through on humor (me), the gorgeous arrogant boy... I could give each of these characters names from my own camp experience. And I could picture the Wolfs' New York: the big Central Park apart I wanted to like this book much more than I did. I was sucked in by the opening chapters, a group of friends, a summer camp much like my own, only half a generation older than me. I even recognized the types: the serious beautiful girl, the nerdy but well loved creative boy, the awkward girl making her way through on humor (me), the gorgeous arrogant boy... I could give each of these characters names from my own camp experience. And I could picture the Wolfs' New York: the big Central Park apartment, Ethan at Stuyvesant, the scary 80s streets, the first days in the East Village, walk up apartments... It's so seductive to see your own life chronicled, if a few years off, and made into the stuff of literature and saga.

And I was also interested in Wolitzer's themes of adult life. In the difference that class and money can make between liefelong friends, something that probably bears more thinking about than I care to do. About what it means that some of us in middle age have "made it" and others of us have not. About what happens to childhood dreams that remain inevitably unfulfilled.

So I was a good audience for this book. A summer camp goer, a New Yorker who vividly remembers the 80s, and someone whose closest friends are still, not summer camp, but the little group that formed a few years later in college. I did enjoy that element of the book - the luxury of self-recognition (to a point), the check boxes of common memory of our city (squeegee men, the Central Park Jogger, Giuliani, the first tech boom, 9/11, etc. etc.).

But that is where she left me. Wolitzer is not a good writer on a sentence or paragraph level. Her prose plods. But more importantly, I utimately couldn't buy her central premise: that we carry our unfulfilled teenagers closely inside us and that those nasty jealous envious insecure creatures dictate the flows and rhythms of our adult life. It's not reflected in my own life, thank God, or those of my friends, except in a few very sad cases. Her dramatic conceit requires us to accept that the traumas and passions of 15 play a large role in who we are at 50. That may be true on an unconscious level, but Wolitzer plays that out on a very literal level. You envied this person then, you envy them more now. I hazard a guess that life could not be lived sanely that way. Most of life happens to you after adolescence - that's just mathematical. And for most people outside of novels, inevitable...and healing.

So I don't believe in her central characters. I just didn't believe that Jules could live in that bubble of longing for the heady days of what she desired during that summer of 15 for so long, without growing or changing. I think Wolitzer meant to convey the banal tragedy of middle age, a woman like the rest of us, who saw stars and glamour at 15 but then had to settle down to ordinariness. But instead of poignant, Jules just seemed irritating and shallow, and Wolitzer seems to enjoy giving her her come uppance as well, not an appealing situation for the main character of a long novel. On the other hand, Jonah - perhaps the most interesting character - is sadly relegated to the sidelines, only popping up here and there as a walk on in the ultimately boring drama of Jules and Ethan.

Finally, I don't want to spoil, but there's an anachronistic date rape right at the center of this book. I would like to believe that the New York police in 1976 would have responded so seriously to an ambiguous maybe-rape-maybe-consensual-sex of a drunk and high teenager by her privileged white ex-boyfriend. But I know that wasn't true then, and it's probably barely true now. (Wolitzer name checks the Jennifer Levin murder - which happened a full ten years later - where the victim was blamed for getting herself dead (slut, she liked it rough, etc.) without accounting for what that means for her central drama). It's a nice plot engine. But unfortunately one that doesn't ring true - not in 1976 anyway.
...more

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Jun 11, 2013 Nicole rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Ugh. I agree so much with Dani's review.

I heard an interview with Wolitzer on NPR and was intrigued and really looked forward to reading this book. I wanted to like it which is why I got nearly halfway through... waiting... hoping something was going to happen... before I skipped about a hundred pages to about 5 or 6 chapters from the end. Wolitzer is so repetitive that it wasn't at all hard to figure out what I'd missed.

This book really has no plot. I actually am a fan of character-driven novel ...more

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Apr 19, 2018 da AL rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-literary, audio-books

For the first two-thirds of this book, I often thought, "Barf! What's so interesting about these self-proclaimed 'interestings'?" This wasn't helped by the audiobook reader doing a good job whenever there was dialog, but rushing dully through the prose.

Yeah! The fundamentally good writing kept me going -- and I was rewarded! Not one to give away spoilers, I'll only say that when the story got to a conversation covering my exact question, the author answered it marvelously! The rest of the book m ...more

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Jan 19, 2015 Fabian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Here's what occurs to the separate/disparate destinies (that don't always simply intertwine) of the Interestings. Some of them become insanely rich, successful, even famous, while others do not. They predictably fall behind: herein, pathos. But every member of that group of artsy folk, their decisions, shape what ultimately becomes the final picture-- engineering their fates in compelling and irrefutable ways.

Wolitzer's beloved novel takes the torch from other contemporary dramas about several c ...more

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Jun 23, 2013 Kevin Lanahan rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommends it for: irony junkies, fatalists

Shelves: fiction

Meh. Another book with an ironic title.

The first part of the book plods along as you wait for something to happen. Then the second part comes and you still wait for something to happen. Then the third part comes along and you understand that the author was just writing a long, unfunny Seinfeld episode, a story about nothing.

Actually, I think she just wanted to let us know that East Coast kids who went to long summer camps in the mountains got married, had kids, had little life dramas, and all ...more

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Jan 02, 2014 Carmen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: american-author, published2013, fiction, traditionally-published, she-says, jewish, bm7-818

A first kiss, Jules had thought, was supposed to magnetize you to the other person; the magnet and the metal were meant to fuse and melt on contact into a sizzling brew of silver and red. But this kiss had done nothing like that. Jules would have liked to tell Ash all about it now. She recognized that that is how friendships begin: one person reveals a moment of strangeness, and the other person decides just to listen and not exploit it.

This book deserves to be read. It is a literary masterpiece ...more

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Jul 03, 2013 K rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: maybe-it-s-me, audiobooks

She sat down to write her review of The Interestings. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. Oh, the angst.

Was it her? Should she list her fifty insecurities in homage to the bizarre self-awareness of these characters, who spent so much time contemplating their navels it was a wonder none of them was ever hit by a car? Oh, dear. Was that a spoiler? No, it wasn't a spoiler. Now, where were we? Have we made much progress with this review?

Okay. Let's move the plot along here. We'll start with the m ...more

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Feb 24, 2015 Glenn Sumi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Interestings is a big, beautiful and utterly absorbing novel about art, friendship, love, life and mortality. It also deals with something rarely seen in fiction: envy.

In the mid-1970s at an arts-oriented summer camp in upstate New York, six precocious kids bond over music, V&Ts (vodka and Tang) and a bit of pot. They each have gifts – some more defined than others – and insecurities. They call themselves “the interestings,” because, well, they are, and they’re convinced they’re going to do ...more

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May 20, 2013 Natalie Tyler rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: excellent-books, literary-fiction

I was tempted to read this book by the glowing reviews and it proved to me that the reviewers are not ALWAYS wrong.

THE INTERESTINGS is a book of great depth and insight. It follows six characters who meet at summer camp in 1974 up through the present--along with, to varying degrees, new friends, new relationships, and family members. Although there are many historically resonant moments, more than anything this is a book about character growth and development. I am not the only one who has comp I was tempted to read this book by the glowing reviews and it proved to me that the reviewers are not ALWAYS wrong.

THE INTERESTINGS is a book of great depth and insight. It follows six characters who meet at summer camp in 1974 up through the present--along with, to varying degrees, new friends, new relationships, and family members. Although there are many historically resonant moments, more than anything this is a book about character growth and development. I am not the only one who has compared this book to the works of Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides. Such comparisons are helpful only on the superficial level that I remember vividly the details of the books, characterization, and themes of these novelists and I will remember "The Interestings" as well. In short, people are realizing that Wolitzer is a first-rate novelist.

The genius of the novel is that is shows such different characters, who are well-developed, as they grow and change against the backdrop of history but more importantly against the backdrop of the Great Themes of Human Life. Friendships. Family. Talent. Loyalty. Lies. Truths. Illness. Depression. Passion. Parenthood. The work-place. Money. Jealousy. Death.

One of the reasons that the books is so successful is the character of Jules (a woman). She is the primary character and we get her point of view much more frequently than that of any other. We come to know,
trust, and (mostly) respect her point of view as she grows and matures, and reflects upon the people in the world about her.

Wolitzer's writing is deliciously complex. She has the ability to bring a fantastic sense of humor to bear alongside the more tragic and weighty events of the novel. She's got a deft ability to create newand exciting metaphors and to make vivid comparisons.

I can guarantee that this book will be, in December, prominent on the Best Books of 2013 lists. I am also planning to read some of her earlier works . The last review I submitted here was about a popular, well-reviewed book (The Uninvited Guests) that I know I won't remember. I will remember this one. Like Franzen and Eugenides, mentioned earlier, I would put this book in the tradition of the solid and memorable literary realism that was perfected by the great 19th century novelists Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, and Thackeray.

Some reviews say that they cannot identify with the characters or that the characters are not likeable. I have never read in that way. I don't read looking for characters to admire or to like but instead I like for characters who can provide insight to the vast panoply of the human condition. Shakespeare's Hamlet instructs the players to hold "the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, her scorn, her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."

Wolitzer has done a spectacular job of holding up the mirror to human nature of the past 40 years. ...more

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Apr 16, 2014 B the BookAddict rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Recommended to B the BookAddict by: Melanie's review

Shelves: bury-me-with-this-book, literary-fiction

Major book hangover after finishing this one.

The Interestings truly makes me swoon. I feel like the unseen member of this group of characters, the author has hypnotized me with her way with words. You simply must read this novel for yourself.

This latest novel by Meg Wolitzer could easily become my reading yardstick. It is thought-provoking, serious, insouciant and amusing; it strolls across your consciousness with a lazy charm. Each character is lovingly crafted; Meg Wolitzer knows what she is ...more

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Jan 12, 2018 Diane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-fiction, audiobooks

"From this day forward, because we are clearly the most interesting people who ever fucking lived ... because we are just so fucking compelling, our brains swollen with intellectual thoughts, let us be known as the Interestings. And let everyone who meets us fall down dead in our path from just how fucking interesting we are."

This is an epic novel that covers several decades in the lives of a group of friends. The friends met in 1974 at a summer camp for the arts, and the book mostly focuses on ...more

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Jul 06, 2016 Maureen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I really honestly enjoyed this book. It is super engrossing and almost felt like watching a movie and seeing how things all played out. I loved the flawed characters and how their decisions felt real, I loved how the story jumped around in different time periods, and I really liked the story overall. These characters felt like people you might know or already know, even though their lives are so different from yours.
Overall pretty great if you enjoy literary fiction! Solid read.

PS I listened to ...more

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Jun 30, 2014 Maxwell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

Absolutely wonderful. Maybe not the most technically brilliant book I've ever read, it had that certain quality that comes along very rarely in reading that completely sweeps you off your feet. I fell in love with the characters because that is what Wolitzer does best in her writing. If you want real, raw characters who you can rejoice or cry with, The Interestings is the book for you. I won't soon forget how each and every one of these characters, their lives, and their talents intertwined with ...more

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Feb 21, 2013 Roxane rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Glorious, messy, intimately epic. More soon.

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Jul 11, 2013 Brigid rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 2013

A local bookstore featured this book on their suggested shelf and had written something to the extent of, "What Franzen tries to do in Freedom, Wolitzer does in The Interestings." Based on this review, I snatched up the book immediately and looked forward to reading it at the beach over a long 4th of July weekend.

And while this book was a mildly entertaining beach read, it stops there. There's not much at stake for any of Wolitzer's characters--all of whom are white, relatively privileged, and f ...more

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Aug 11, 2013 Jane Olsen rated it it was ok · review of another edition

The premise of the book is one that is quite familiar: a group of young people develop a strong bond while attending camp together, and the story follows the evolution of their lives and relationships into adulthood. It's fascinating to me that so many people think this is an outstanding piece of writing. The author fails one of my most elementary assessments for my fifth-grade writers: Can you show me what you mean, instead of telling me? Not only are these characters not particularly interesti ...more

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May 05, 2019 Vanessa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I felt like I was reading this book forever but I did enjoy most of it. It could have been slightly condensed at times but I was never bored so I don’t begrudge the length. The story really is an examination of friendship, the highs the lows and all the pit falls that involve long term friendships, especially those formed during adolescence where everything is heightened and friendship is EVERYTHING.

The group of friends first meet up at a arty summer camp and quickly coin themselves ironically ...more

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Mar 10, 2013 Richard Kramer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This totally annoyed me, because it's fantastic and it's the book I wanted to write next if I was good enough to write it, which I'm probably not. It would be condescending and untrue to say of Meg Wolitzer that her work just keeps getting better, because it's always good. This one especially moved me, maybe because I saw myself in all its characters. And I like a longish book that pisses you off because it ends and now you've read it and what the fuck are you supposed to do now? ...more

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Mar 07, 2013 Heather rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-lit, 5-star-reads

The most effusive 5 star rating i have given in a while...this is another "book coma" one for me, where i am gonna have to take a few days off from reading because I'm going to be pissed off at any book that isn't this book for some time. The writing sucked me in immediatly, and even though i read fiction like it's my job...and thankfully it kind of is...that doesn't happen very often. Then, the themes of the book...at times I would have sworn someone was following me around with a hidden camera ...more

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Aug 08, 2013 Lex rated it really liked it · review of another edition

While the main character irked me at times with her jealousy and how unappreciative she was of her own life and talents, the author created her with the saving grace of self-awareness of these traits. The fact that she isn't blind to the absurdity of her envy of her friends was redeeming for me in a way.

Liked:
The author touched on a lot of meaningful themes that resonated with me.
--Am I now who I thought I would become when I was young?
--Is it significant that I may not be how I thought I would ...more

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Jan 25, 2014 Jr Bacdayan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

There are certain points in our life that float on the surface of our pool of memories. Things that claim and reclaim our thoughts more than we want them to, recollections that our etched into us no matter what we do. It can be a blissful moment, a painful time, a hopeful dream. But whatever causes us to look back to what was, to feel what we felt, to hear what we heard, to be what we were, is something that we long for, consciously or unconsciously. There is a thing lost that we want to recaptu ...more

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Sep 17, 2013 Abby rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-in-2013

Meg Wolitzer is a good writer and the first 100 pages vividly captures the angst-y itch of being adolescent and artistic, but as the plot progresses and the characters continue to act like their selfish and immature selves well into middle age, I ultimately lost interest in them.

Wolitzer brings up many important topics (e.g., rape, 9/11, and AIDS, as well as themes of unrequited love, the role of money in friendships, morality and ethics between friends and couples, etc.) but everything is disc ...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Celeste Ng added it · review of another edition

Why did I wait so long to read this? It came out years ago and everyone I knew raved about it. But I wanted to wait until I had a chunk of time to settle into it and enjoy it--and I'm so glad I did. It's one of the most thoughtful and poignant examinations of friendship--and marriage and ambition--that I've ever seen. ...more

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About Meg Wolitzer

Meg Wolitzer

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Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking. She is also the author of the young adult novel Belzhar. Wolitzer lives in New York City.

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Quotes from The Interestings

“But, she knew, you didn’t have to marry your soulmate, and you didn’t even have to marry an Interesting. You didn’t always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting.” — 113 likes

“She recognized that that is how friendships begin: one person reveals a moment of strangeness, and the other person decides just to listen and not exploit it.” — 101 likes

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