The Interestings
A Novel
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The Interestings
Narrated by:
Jen Tullock
Buy Now for £14.99
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Narrated by:
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Jen Tullock
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By:
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Meg Wolitzer
About this listen
"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.
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Critic reviews
"Like Virginia Woolf in The Waves, Meg Wolitzer gives us the full picture here, charting her characters' lives from the self-dramatizing of adolescence, through the resignation of middle age, to the attainment of a wisdom that holds all the intensities of life in a single, sustained chord, much like this book itself. The wit, intelligence, and deep feeling of Wolitzer's writing are extraordinary and The Interestings brings her achievement, already so steadfast and remarkable, to an even higher level."—Jeffrey Eugenides
Engrossing
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I love Jen Tullock’s mellow narration, which changes depending on who is speaking. Each character is recognisable in their timbre of speech and Jen Tullock has written a group of wholly believable people with their own distinct take on the world. The Interestings is beautifully descriptive without being flowery and she paints New York through the times of these friends, with clear knowledge and insight, peppering the story with real events.
Not since I’ve listened to The Goldfinch, have I been so wholly absorbed in a book. You travel with each individual, changing how you feel about each one as the story moves on; with their ups and downs and growing maturity. The group of friends began to feel like my own; they make you giggle, angry or let you down. At times I gasped audibly as secrets were revealed or the plot unfolded. No character is a stereotype or perfect, but each totally rounded and relatable.
As with Donna Tartt, I look forward to listening (or reading) any future book by Meg Wolitzer and would highly recommend it for any book club.
Tying with The Goldfinch as my favourite audible listen
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Profound, gripping and warm like the characters
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Incredible
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An animated capturing of the human experience
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