Publication Date: April 2013
Categories: Contemporary Women, Literary
Description:
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.
My Thoughts:
Here’s the deal: I loved this book. I want to hug, kiss, marry this book.
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| I can’t love an inanimate object? Ohhh yes I can. |
This group of kids meet up at a fancy pants art camp every summer. They dub themselves “The Interestings” because they are pretty damn full of themselves. You would think that this would be a turn off. But it’s NOT. Guess what? They are interesting.
I adored every character in this book. Some are easy to love. A few are easy to hate. There are famous mothers, abusive pasts, shameful backgrounds, a possible crime, unrequited love…I could go on.
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| I’ve got money to burn. How you like me now? |
The bonds that these kids form in their youth will stay with them throughout their lives. Two of them find success beyond their wildest dreams. One character loses himself. A few are forced to give up on their aspirations because of forces beyond their control.
The way these friendships form, stretch, and break is marvelous. The Interestings is an engaging character study and a truly unputdownable story.
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| Read this book. Seriously! |