The Interestings

On a warm night in 1974, six teenagers meet at Spirit-in-the-Woods summer camp. They smoke, drink, talk and decide that they are, and will remain, the Interestings. Decades later, their lives have not unfolded equally. Jules has traded acting dreams for a more practical adulthood. Ethan’s animated creation has made him famous and wealthy. Ash, Jonah, Cathy and Goodman carry their own gifts, secrets, disappearances and losses. As chance and envy reshape the group, the intensity of adolescence gives way to the harder question of what friendship can survive. Generous and psychologically acute, The Interestings is an American coming-of-age novel like no other; exploring the intricacies of creativity, money and ambition when they come into contact with lifelong friendship. For readers looking for book club fiction with sweep and emotional intelligence, Meg Wolitzer follows the people we once wanted to become and the lives we actually make. ‘A truly great novel about friendship, and how it deepens and changes over the years’ David Sedaris, author of Me Talk Pretty One Day

On a warm night in 1974, six teenagers meet at Spirit-in-the-Woods summer camp. They smoke, drink, talk and decide that they are, and will remain, the Interestings. Decades later, their lives have not unfolded equally. Jules has traded acting dreams for a more practical adulthood. Ethan’s animated creation has made him famous and wealthy. Ash, Jonah, Cathy and Goodman carry their own gifts, secrets, disappearances and losses. As chance and envy reshape the group, the intensity of adolescence gives way to the harder question of what friendship can survive. Generous and psychologically acute, The Interestings is an American coming-of-age novel like no other; exploring the intricacies of creativity, money and ambition when they come into contact with lifelong friendship. For readers looking for book club fiction with sweep and emotional intelligence, Meg Wolitzer follows the people we once wanted to become and the lives we actually make. ‘A truly great novel about friendship, and how it deepens and changes over the years’ David Sedaris, author of Me Talk Pretty One Day

"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.

"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.