THE INTERESTINGS is a novel about six friends who meet at a summer arts camp in the 1970s, following them through their teen, college, and eventually adult years. I call them “the modern classics,” and one of my favorites is Meg Wolitzer’s THE INTERESTINGS. They’re books that have lasted, but we can’t yet predict where they’ll be in a century (though if they’re not on our bookshelves, we’ve done something terribly wrong). The third is a bit harder to define: they’re the ones published in the last fifty years or so by masters like Junot Díaz, Jay McInerney, Joan Didion, and Toni Morrison. The second, contemporary hits (yay, publishing!) that I’ve got to stay on top of to know what’s what. The first is the classics (Austen & Co.). But what makes The Interestings exceptional is the precision and elegance of Wolitzer's writing.On my Goodreads shelf, you can pretty distinctly divide the books I’ve read into three categories. Intelligent and subtle, it is exquisitely written with enormous warmth and depth of emotion.
Against the backdrop of a changing America, from Nixon's resignation to Obama's new world, Wolitzer's panoramic tragicomedy asks how 'the Interestings' can be happy with being anything less than brilliant? As their fortunes tilt precipitously over the years, some of them dealing with great struggle, others enjoying extraordinary wealth and success, friendships are put under the strain of envy and crushing disappointment. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, has resigned herself to a more practical occupation Cathy has stopped dancing Jonah has laid down his guitar and taken up engineering.
But decades later not everyone can sustain in adulthood what had seemed so special in adolescence. In a teepee at summer camp they smoke pot and drink vodka & Tangs, talk of Gunter Grass and the latest cassette tapes they also share their dreams and ambitions, still so fresh and so possible. The friendships they make this summer will be the most important and consuming of their lives.
On a warm July night in 1974 six teenagers play at being cool.
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