The Interestings: A Novel

**possible spoilers**I don't usually read these types of "book club" books, but I recently joined such a club and so I have to go with the other member's choices. Myself, I prefer non-fiction about trends and ideas, autobiographies of noteworthy people, historical novels, true crime, and old classics that have been on my Bucket List forever. Nevertheless, I gave this book a very open mind, up until I was about 50 percent of the way through, and then decided I only liked it enough to give it two stars. I mainly finished it so that I could talk about it honestly at the book club meeting.First, the things I liked about it: as another reviewer said, it's kind of an old-fashioned novel, at least in its structure and scope. In fact, it reminded me of a tonier version of a Jacqueline Suzann novel from the late 60s to early 70s, in that it features a cast of inter-connected characters who weave in and out of the narrative over a long period of time, with one character's point of view predominating, but not taking up the whole story by any means. These types of novels don't seem to get written very often today, and it was nice to revisit that style for a change. Secondly, Wolitzer **does** offer up a few great insights, which I liked enough to highlight (and that's no small praise; I didn't highlight anything from the second book our club read, which I hated.)Unfortunately, the book seems to suffer a lot from the author's claustrophobic world view, which doesn't seem to encompass anything beyond the incestuous world of the upper-middle-class New York literary, academic and arts scene, combined with the equally incestuous world of Northeastern progressive political activism. The characters all have the same drearily conformist political and social opinions about everything, and their politics are hammered home in a ham-fisted way every few pages. Nearly every major character seems to be Jewish, or half-Jewish, or possibly Jewish, but undeclared. (The one major character who seems resolutely non-Jewish, a dancer called Cathy, is ostracized from the group in the first third of the book, and doesn't reappear until much later. Tellingly, Cathy goes on to become a successful corporate executive, which the author clearly seems to think vindicates her cruel expulsion from the group.) Nearly every other character is either an artist of some sort, or an upper-middle class urban professional, such as a lawyer or therapist. There's no room for a Future Farmer of America, or a West Point graduate, or an oil company middle manager in Wolitzer's closed little circle of "good" people, who might mess up her tidy worldview with conflicting perspectives.There's nothing wrong with the narrowness of Wolitzer's cast of characters, but if you are going to set your novel up as some sort of anthem for the late-stage boomer generation, it would have helped if your characters were a little bit more representational of that generation's actual ethnic make-up.The second main thing I disliked about the book was that it didn't strike me as particularly historically accurate, despite the constant invoking of Seventies pop culture ephemera (Average White Band, Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific Shampoo, the Bicentennial). I'm a late-stage boomer myself, born in 1960, but never once did I believe that the teen-agers who dubbed themselves "The Interestings," were actually teen-agers from the Seventies. They talked and acted more like politically correct characters from a 21st Century Young Adult Novel, shoe-horned backwards into history.For example, the character Figman complains at one point that everything their group talks about is peppered with irony and constant references to books, movies, and popular music. But the massive drenching of the popular media in "irony" and the endless boomer reverence for pop cultural references were not Seventies things; they first appeared in the late 80s/early 90s. In the Seventies, people were not "ironic," they were deadly serious about everything (it wasn't a fun decade.) And no, there wasn't much reverence for pop culture, for the simple reason that not very much of it existed at the time (TV as a mass communication device was only about 20 years old in 1974.) Benzoyl peroxide wasn't a widely available acne medicine; that would have been the old, greasy version of Clearasil (you had to get a doctor's prescription for BP--I know because I had one.) Futons were an Eighties thing, not a Seventies thing. This stuff may sound nit-picky, but if you were actually there, these things stand outLastly, as other reviewers have observed, the characters are not really all that interesting or engaging (maybe the author meant her title to be "ironic?"). They are all hugely, embarassingly self-absorbed and spend a massive amount of time talking, talking, and talking yet again. The only member of the group that I really felt anything for at all was Jonah, the gay guy, who is the victim of an appalling episode of child abuse from one of his hippy-dippy mother's boyfriends. And the highly satisfying scene where Jonah finally confronts his smarmy abuser, decades later, is really the only part of the book that I would ever describe as "riveting" or "compelling." Tellingly, there's nothing approaching any kind of judgement from the author about Jonah's mother, a Joan Baez-style folksinger, and how she raised her son. She may have left him alone several times with a sociopath, and never provided him with a stable home, but she sings anti-war songs and gives free concerts to raise money for progressive causes, so hey, that makes it all right in the end. The same is true of Goodman, the ne'er-do-well character, who date-rapes the despised Cathy, but nobody cares because he would have voted for Carter in 1980--that is, if he hadn't skipped bail and left the country to avoid a jail sentence before then.Unfortunately, the three main characters--Figman, Ash and Jules--are also the dreariest and the least interesting. Figman, in particular, suffers from being virtually canonized as a progressive saint by the author, a 21st century secular, liberal version of "Beth" from "Little Women"(and yes, Figman dies comparatively young at the end of the book, just like Beth.) See Figman turn down a plum job at Disney to nurse an old friend through illness; see Figman crusade against child labor in Indonesia; see Figman write generous checks to help out his less prosperous friends; see Figman nobly and unfailingly support his wife, Ash's, career as a feminist theater director. And also, see Figman become massively wealthy, even though he says he doesn't value money and just sort of falls into his success without being so vulgar as to, you know, actually seek it out (unlike that horrible Cathy). Which seems to be another progressive liberal fantasy update of an old literary convention--that of the virtuous heroine who ends up marrying a poor man for love, but who actually marries a rich, handsome earl in disguise. (Instead of the virginal Barbara Cartland heroine, you have the "brilliant" non-materialistic artist who **accidentally** becomes rich and famous, just because he's so wonderful and perfect and progressive and all.) Despite the author's constant attempts to make me adore Figman and feel devastated when he died, I simply didn't. Not at all. It was more like "thank God, he's finally gone."But if Figman and Ash are dreary and predictable, at least they actually **do** things; you can't say the same about the third character in their weird, almost, romantic triangle. That would be Jules--a woman who must be a sure contender for the title of "Most Boring Protagonist in Literary History." And unfortunately, that's the really **big** flaw of the book, because Jules is actually the main character, through whom we see the unfolding lives of all the other "Interestings." There is nothing the least bit interesting about Jules. She marries a fairly unsuitable, but not really horrible man named Dennis, has two kids, and puts aside her brief, failed acting career to become a therapist. There is literally nothing else; end of story. Even her therapy clients are boring, with boring, trivial problems. No Bob Newhart-style quirkiness here.In closing, a writer on a blog I sometimes read wrote a post recently, which noted that today's best-selling literary authors don't really live "real" lives anymore, unlike the literary lions of the 20th Century. They all seem to come from more or less the same class of people, and go directly from grad school at a top-tier, usually Eastern, college, to a book contract wangled through a friend or relative's contacts within the highly incestuous, New York publishing milieu. Unlike, say, Ernest Hemingway, a World War I veteran, or George Orwell, a former homeless man, or John Steinbeck, a one-time farm worker and fish hatchery watchman. Sadly, Ms. Wolitzer's writing style, world view, and subject matter all seem to bear this theory out.After finishing this book, I decided to finally read "From Here to Eternity," (on my Bucket List of modern classics forever) just to wash the claustrophobic triviality of "The Interestings" out of my mind.

I've often thought of myself and some of my friends as potential "The Interestings" when we were younger, but have grown into something much less. Wolitzer has taken this premise and given us clear examples of how people change, sometimes for the best, but sometimes not. The novel jumps back and forth in time at the beginning of the novel, but eventually settles into a straightforward story to the end.There are plenty of summaries and discussions of the plot here, so I thought I'd summarize the stories of the six main characters (and a few minor characters), which might help someone reading this long-ish, slightly complicated novel (especially with the flashbacks and flash-forwards at the beginning). Plot spoilers ahead - but think of this as an overview of the full novel. There's still plenty to be discovered in the reading.JULIA "JULES" JACOBSON (JACOBSON-BOYD)==========================Failed comedy actress, successful therapist, and unsatisfied middle-aged wife. Best friend and huge supporter of Ash Wolf-Figman, but Jules eventually betrays Ash (letting the ethical Ethan find out about Goodman), just as she discouraged Ethan from wearing a hat (which eventually gave him a melanoma)....... DENNIS BOYD, Julia's big, handsome, hairy, sex football player/sonogram technician husband...... Not artistic (like "The Interestings")...... But he overcomes major depression, falls ill again, and recovers again. The most admirable of the characters....... AURORA "RORY" JACOBSON-BOYD, the outdoorsy, slightly wild, tomboyish daughter of Julia and Dennis.ETHAN FIGMAN==============Sweaty unattractive nerd, the cartoonist (think "Ren and Stimpy") who does what he loves and becomes rich (very rich!!) and famous (very famous!!) for it. Also famous for his ethics. Lobbies against child labor. Despite his success, he carries a torch for Jules for most of his life. Dies of cancer.ASH FIGMAN (AKA ASH WOLF)==============The second-rate secret-keeping sister of Goodman Wolf and wife of (eventually) wealthy Ethan. She's raised in a Dakota-like apartment called "The Labyrinth" to well-to-do parents, Gil and Betsy. Eventually she becomes a feminist play director, but it's unclear how much of this is due to her moneyed husband Ethan....... LARKIN (the brilliant daughter) and MO (the autistic son) of Ethan and Ash.GOODMAN WOLF==============Ash's brother, the non-architect. He rapes Cathy Kipplinger and hotes out in Iceland with support from his sister Ash, Ash's well-to-do family, and the other Interestings BUT NOT the ethical Ethan.JONAH BAY===========Wants to be a folk singer but is drugged and his childhood is stolen from him by a friend of his mother's. He becomes a very productive computer programmer/developer but finally returns to loving music. Eventually gay, his long-time partner leaves him because he's not HIV+....... JUDY BAY, Jonah's mother. A soft folksy Judy Collins-like singer with a few major hits....... Eventually she joins the Moonie cult from which her son Jonah escaped/rejected...... ROBERT TAKISHIMA, Jonah's long-term partner. HIV+....... Former copy-store worker, he becomes a gay-activist lawyer and leaves Jonah for another HIV+ guy.CATHY KIPLINGER================The least interesting of "The Interestings" and the most weakly drawn. A failed dancer, she eventually overcomes being raped by Goodman to become a financial guardian of her Cantor-Fitzgerald-like employees after 9/11.

The concept of this novel is not particularly original - a group of teenagers meet at an arty summer camp (Spirit of the Woods) and their lives remain intertwined in different ways as they move into adulthood over the coming decades. Except they don't all really grow up. Jules, in many ways the central character, never emotionally leaves Spirit in the Woods and actually returns for a summer as camp coordinator with her husband Dennis when they are in their 50s. Not surprisingly, one message is that nostalgia isn't a good basis for making major life decisions. The success of the original friends, self-styled 'Interestings', diverges widely. A central theme is Jules' resentment of Ethan and Ash's success and fortune in creative arts compared with her and Dennis's modest lives. In Ethan and Ash's success and happy lives though there is a 'locked door', a secret that the reader knows is going to blow things apart eventually. The resolution of their stories is a kind of hubris, though again not an original theme. There are other reckonings with the past for less central characters too. The characters and their lives are well-drawn and remained with me for a while after reading. The book does flag around three-quarter way through and the relationships between the main characters becomes repetitive. The story picks up again as they each address mid-life crises. What I did not like at all was the treatment of Mo, Ethan's autistic son, who is characterized mostly as a problem for everyone else especially Ethan who is too much a man-child to be a father to him. There is a hint of Mo's own creative capacity but this is undeveloped and he remains a foil for portraying Ethan and Ash's not quite so perfect lives. Overall this is well worth reading and is an engaging story.

I absolutely adored the first part of the book and couldn't put it down - the characters were likeable and there was a good amount of drama to get your teeth into. The main premise of the book explores the presence of envy among friendship groups which is common in today's society and really relatable. Unfortunately this focus was quickly lost when heading into part two of the book which was a big old chunk of pages where hardly ANYTHING happens. As this section of nothingness continued, I really began to dislike the main character Jules who became quite selfish and far too nostalgic for my liking.Despite the story itself being a bit meh, I did enjoy Wolitzer's interesting writing style and she has a great method of subtly heading back in time when creating more depth to the characters. She also did a great job at highlighting key affairs that happened across history which is rare in a coming of age novel.The story was definitely only 2 stars but I did enjoy Wolitzer's writing so hence why I've marked it up.

I really enjoyed this novel, it's a book driven by the complexity of relationships, whether it be marriage or friendship. If you like plot driven novels then this isn't for you. I got throughly involved in the characters and their lives and was so sorry when it finished Each character you could analyse and find good and bad. There are lots of themes in the novel like feminism, homosexuality, class, money and illness. A really good read.

I was totally absorbed by the slow unravelling of these people's lives and watching what they became. Such insight - different people, different motivations, different ways of coping with the vicissitudes of life. There's lots to recognise, and the way the characters' lives are separate but woven together is constantly fascinating. Masterly writing. Deeply drawn characters. It's like a long, slow process of discovery, all of it adding up to something. It's my first experience of Meg Wolitzer. I'll be reading her others now for sure.

I just couldn't get into the characters in this book. I really didn't like the main characters or any of the other characters for that matter. They were quite whingy about what was really a pretty privileged life. It meandered and I probably wouldn't have finished it if it wasn't a book club book.