Meg Wolitzer’s newest novel, The Interestings, follows a group of friends from the time they meet at a summer camp for artistically gifted teenagers until their fifties. They all start out believing they’re special, talented, better than everyone-- which is complicated when they grow up and only some of them live up to those beliefs. The Interestings (the name they give themselves at camp that first summer) consist of Jules, the main protagonist, who comes to the camp on scholarship after her father’s death; Ethan, an awkward and homely but extremely talented young cartoonist; Ash and Goodman, stunningly attractive brother and sister who come from a wealthy Manhattan family; Cathy, a slightly out-of-place member of the group who is seen as more experienced and mature; and Jonah, the son of a famous folk singer, who is more troubled and fragile than any of them realize.
Lemon and Kansas want to talk about this book in a different way than we usually would, because we have a lot of feelings about it. We’re going to take turns asking each other questions about the book, and we’ll try to keep it as straightforward as possible for those who haven’t read the book (which should, eventually, be NONE OF YOU).
Kansas: Lemon, please rate this book from 1-10 in the following four categories: Feels, Sexiness, Comedy, Truth Bombs.
Lemon:
Feels: 8. I think in order to earn a higher feels rating, this would have to be part of a series. And it’s not. But it did make me cry, which is saying something, especially because you did not cry, which I feel is probably a first for us.
Sexiness: 2. There is very little good sex in this book, which is fine, but does not contribute to a high sexiness rating. In addition, the only people I liked are supposed to be very unattractive. So. Not a sexy book.
Comedy: 6. I don’t remember laughing a lot at this book, but several of the characters are witty and there’s also all the comedic elements that come along with being a youth.
Truth Bombs: 9. READ ON FOR DETAILS.
L: Kansas, please explain to me the role you feel adolescence plays in this novel.
K: This is a great question. For the first section of the novel, it is paramount. They’re all teenagers, and like most teenagers, they are very absorbed in their teenage lives and issues. As they grow up, most of The Interestings (4 out of 6, to be exact) remain each other’s closest friends. They keep each other tethered to this phase of their development. They are constantly reminiscing and even pining for the days when they all first met and the most magical summer camp on earth. Seriously. they are obsessed with this place.
One of the minor characters makes a comment to Ash and Ethan at one point, noting how unusual it is to stay so attached when they met at fifteen, but none of them find anything odd about it, even though it is. Their lives go in drastically different directions; they probably should have other friends. The members of the group branch out for casual friends and romantic partners, but they remain each other’s best friends and form some semblance of a family into middle age.
They remain an exclusive group, and that connection to their teenage years is vital to their continued relationship. Because of this, all of the characters experience stagnancy throughout the novel. They each maintain aspects of adolescence that they should have outgrown. Jules remains completely self-absorbed and in a constant state of want; even when she realizes she’s being childish, she persists. Ash clings to her naivety under the guise of loyalty. Goodman literally runs from adulthood and all its responsibilities. Jonah is in a state of arrested development until he is in his 50s, and Ethan refuses to let go of the idealized crush of his youth, Jules, despite her clear lack of reciprocation and the fact that his wife, who loves him, is more successful, beautiful, wealthy, etc.
There are some wonderful and terrible parts of adolescence. Overall, I think we can agree that it’s the worst, but for this group of people, it was where they formed their identity and met their best friends. I can understand, kind of, why they would be unwilling to let go of it. What Wolitzer may be getting at, as she details the ups and downs of the character’s lives, is that clinging to a stage you are meant to outgrow, is damaging to your future, your relationships and your overall happiness. Most of these characters don’t realize how unhappy they are until it is either too late or 40 years has passed. The characters either have to learn to be best friends apart from their first summer together and in the new context of adulthood, or remain the same selfish teenagers they were when they met.
K: Lemon, why and in what ways did you relate to the characters in the novel?
L: Thank you for asking, Kansas! You know we’re both big fans of stories that take a long time to tell-- not just that are long, exactly, but that take place over a long period of time. Jules is fifteen at the start of this book, and it ends when she’s in her fifties. I found her relatable as a character, as I think any girl who grew up considering herself smart would, but I noticed a significant dropoff in how much I related to her as the story went on.
When we first meet Jules as a young woman, her identity is basically just that she is pretty smart, pretty funny and very awkward, and she’s just lost her dad. She only begins to consider herself “interesting” because of the friends she makes, and it’s true that as a unit they’re a lot more interesting than they would be on their own. I related to all of that.
As she grows up, she tries to achieve a level of success that she never even comes close to actually getting, and she finds out she isn’t really that special. I can relate to that too.
Then, in most of the adult portion of the novel, I suddenly wasn’t relating anymore. I don’t have an established career that I’m kind of disappointed by. I’m not married. I haven’t really given up any dreams yet. I don’t know which of my friends will be successful enough to make me jealous and how I’ll deal with that.
In a lot of ways it felt kind of prophetic, because I’d felt a pretty strong kinship with Jules when she was young. Like, is this what’s going to happen to me? Is this how I should expect to feel later, depending on how things go over the next ten years? It was such a unique experience as a reader, because usually I either relate to a protagonist or I don’t, and going from one end of the spectrum to the other with one character is very unusual.
L: Kansas, would you like to discuss the ending of the novel? (I will type out the final paragraph here, for those of you who have not yet read the book but enjoy things that are good.)
“Jules stood and looked at Ethan’s drawings again. Finally she placed them in the chest in the living room where she kept the few things that corresponded to that time in her life. There were the signed, spiral-bound Spirit-in-the-Woods yearbooks from three summers in a row and the aerial photograph of everyone at camp the second summer. In it, Ethan’s feet were planted on Jules’s head, and Jules’s feet were planted on Goodman’s head, and so on and so on. And didn’t it always go like that-- body parts not quite lining up the way you wanted them to, all of it a little bit off, as if the world itself were an animated sequence of longing and envy and self-hatred and grandiosity and failure and success, a strange and endless cartoon loop that you couldn’t stop watching, because, despite all you knew by now, it was still so interesting.”
K: I’m audibly sighing over here just rereading this perfect last paragraph. I mean, the last sentence itself, come on. You’ve outdone yourself Wolitzer, you beautiful, perfect woman. But seriously, when it comes to endings, I’m pretty judgy. If an ending is wrong, if it doesn’t live up to the rest of the book, it will ruin the entire thing for me. It’s just that they’re so important. Also, endings seem like the most difficult and overwhelming thing a writer can ever attempt to take on.
I dabble in fiction writing (I will never let anyone see it because I hate all of it, but I keep trying) and when you create characters, they’re very easy to lose control of. Sometimes I will only be on my fourth page and suddenly I have no idea who these characters have become. They are wild animals, completely unpredictable, and I know I’m the one writing them, but it’s a way bigger undertaking than you think when you’re only reading fiction. So to think that some writers can not only wrangle them all back together for a coherent ending but also do it perfectly and beautifully in a way that makes Lemon cry... It’s just too much. So, two things: I will hate a book if the ending is bad, and a good ending is incredibly impressive to me. Wolitzer is queen of endings, and this book will be her ending legacy. I’m probably being dramatic, but I can’t get over it.
The last 10-15 pages of the book are emotional and overwhelming, especially after spending 460 pages with these characters. Some crazy stuff happens at the end, as if Wolitzer is trying to make her job of creating an ending even more difficult (she would). There were a lot of easy, predictable routes she could’ve taken with the last few pages and her last words, but she didn’t. She didn’t try to gloss over anything or tie a nice ribbon on this beautiful dysfunctional group of friends and make it seem like they somehow transformed into better, happier people. The last sentence in particular emphasizes both how flawed these people were while at the same time confirming how deeply they cared for one another. That to me is so completely relatable and perfect. I read the last sentence to my husband out loud because I couldn’t understand how one sentence could summarize all of my feelings about 470 pages of literature, but it did. Of course, he only heard one sentence of the book. No tears were shed: he’s not hailing Queen Wolitzer. But judgemental reader Kansas over here is saying she did it perfectly, and I want you all to read this book so you can understand that.
K: Lemon, please talk about Dennis. First, tell them who Dennis is, then talk about why you hate him and stuff.
L: Well phrased, Kansas. I would love to talk about Dennis and all his flaws.
Jules ends up marrying a man she meets post-college through a mutual friend, and that man’s name is Dennis. He is described as steady, as looking like a bear, as dependable and blah blah blah. I don’t actually hate Dennis, really. I just think he doesn’t fit in, which, to be fair, so do all the other characters in the book.
I spent a long time trying to figure out why I didn’t like Dennis while I was reading the story. Partially, I think it’s because it’s shown in the book that who you marry has an effect on how successful you become. Ethan probably wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did without Ash’s money and social connectedness behind him, and she made up for everything he lacked. I think I was holding out hope that Jules would have the same story. But Dennis is not the man for that job.
The main reason, though, is that Dennis is the only character in the story who considers himself average and has no problem with it. All he wants is a steady job and family. He isn’t interested in being interesting. Honestly, I think a lot of my dislike for Dennis is just immaturity on my part, finding that a lesser goal than being famous and special. I’m not sure whether Meg Wolitzer intended him to be admirable or not, but he does serve as a very clear foil for the rest of the group. Jules settles and hates herself for it. Jonah hides, Goodman runs, Ethan and Ash actually get to have their dreams come true. Dennis settles and is fine with it. Is he the kind of person who could carry a story on his own? No. Does he stand a much better chance at being happy than everybody else? Yes, absolutely.
***
To summarize, we think you should read this book, because there are a hundred more things we would have liked to talk about. Though the beginning of the novel focuses on a very specific type of adolescent, tracking them until they grow up into adults who are also a part of a unique community within all the rich white people in New York, it is oddly accessible. I think that’s the work of a great writer. As a reader, you’re not focusing on the parts of their lives that are nothing like your own because that’s not Wolitzer’s focus. Her characters are faced with their own dissatisfaction and unhappiness as they confront their own worst qualities. These are not likeable characters, but for the most part, they really love each other. They’re not special, they’re not overly talented and their hopes of being interesting didn’t really work out, but what actually makes them interesting is their eventual willingness to recognize the dark parts of themselves, understand that they’re not unique or better than anyone else, and find meaningful relationships with one another.
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