The Interestings Book Summary

In 'The Interestings' by Meg Wolitzer, a group of friends meets at a summer camp for the arts, where they forge bonds that shape their lives. As the years pass, their paths diverge dramatically, with each facing the harsh realities of adulthood and their own ambitions. The novel explores themes of creativity, ambition, and the fleeting nature of youth, all while highlighting the tension between talent and success. Through rich character development, readers witness the impact of fate and choice on friendship. Will they remain connected despite life's complexities, or will they drift apart like the dreams they once shared?

By Meg Wolitzer

Published: 2014

"We were all searching for something, and yet, there was a beauty in our imperfections and the paths we chose."

Book Review of The Interestings

“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) The New York Times–bestselling novel by Meg Wolitzer that has been called "genius" (The 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 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.

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We were all searching for something, and yet, there was a beauty in our imperfections and the paths we chose.

The Interestings

By Meg Wolitzer