Margin Notes: The Interestings

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

About the Book: 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 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 Interestingsexplores 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.(less)

My review: I loved this book. There's something about the characters that really drew me in, and as the story developed, I got more and more interested in them. Each characters has his or her own set of flaws, but I found myself rooting for them in spite of those flaws.

This is about a group of friends who meet at an art camp in HS. They remain friends throughout life (until where the story stops). A couple are immensely talented. One in particular is very successful. The twists and turns of friendship, and what that means, and what growing up means, were really well represented in this book.

The writing was beautiful, but the heart of this book was the relationships between the characters. Highly recommended.

I did think this was a bit of a slower read for me, but I liked that since it's the summer.

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