The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer was sold to me as a story about adult friendships. This description is nearly always going to be something that draws me in (consider the Elena Ferrante books), so let's see how it worked out this time.

First of all, I really like the cover of this book. Second of all, I don't understand how the cover of the book relates to anything in the text of the book. Third of all, the reason I'm talking about the cover of the book is because I'm procrastinating on articulating my thoughts on this book.

We start this book by meeting a group of six teens at an art-based summer camp. They dub themselves The Interestings. We follow their lives from there. That's the plot. 

There are a number of things to be admired about this book. Wolitzer does manage to make all of the characters distinctive. You are not confusing the dorky cartoon-drawing guy with the rich gadabout. There are a large number of characters throughout the novel and each is drawn in an admirable manner. The long timeline, from the 1970s through until the 2010s, is served with exactly the right amount of historical fiction interjections that make it seem like these are things that happened in the past that would impact lives of everyday people without seeming like a history textbook. The writing itself is straightforward and easy to read and while I like that style a lot, if you want interesting sentence structure or immersive descriptions, you will not like this style.

But. 

Early on in the narrative, the author tells you what will happen in the end. There's no suspense. 

And that would be fine if I could convince myself that this was a character-driven story instead of a plot-driven story, but if it were character-driven, shouldn't I know more about the internal life of these characters beyond their number one feature?  The structure of this book was all wrong and I wanted to tear my hair out as I was reading it. Why order it like this, Wolitizer, why?  

(There's also a character named Robert Takahashi who is always referred to by both of his names, sometimes multiple times in the same scene. This doesn't happen with any other character, which seems vaguely racist and/or homophobic to me. It made me incredibly uncomfortable to read scenes with him in it because I wasn't sure why this character was being singled out for this writing treatment.)

It's rare that I say this, but I sort of wish I'd DNFed this one at about halfway through because nothing really interesting happened after that point.  

3/5 stars

Lines of note:

"Anaïs Nin and Günter Grass both have umlauts," remarked Ethan. "Maybe that's the key to their success. I'm going to get one for myself." (page 10)

I always thought I was smart, but I did not know what an umlaut was when I was a teenager. 

She'd lost grasp of what the number might possibly be, the way she'd lost track, some years ago, of the current population of the earth. (page 46)

The human population of the planet is just over 8 billion. 

Some dreams in life were attainable, and others weren't, no matter how much they were desired. It was all unfair, having more to do with luck than anything else. (page 314-315)

Such a preachy tone. 

Some people had no Town Car. What was a Town Car, and why did they call it that? What town did it refer to? (page 335)

I did like this little bit of internal monologue. Isn't that how we all think?

Things I looked up:

plangent (voice) (page 131) - (of a sound) loud, reverberating, and often melancholy

won a few Obies (page 320) - Off-Broadway theater awards. What I'm learning when I read books latey is that I should have maybe gone to a play once or twice in my life. 

one playing a scherzo (page 404) - a vigorous, light, or playful composition, typically comprising a movement in a symphany or sonata

chapbook (page 408) - a small book or pamphlet containing poems, ballads, stories, or religious tracts

Hat mentions:

He had been wearing a floppy denim hat then...(page 5) - There's an entire passage about this hat on page 87, as well.

This time he'd drawn the Three Wise Men, each one plump and eccentric in a robe and tall hat...(page 44)

People in that kiss are. . . wearing stovepipe hats. . . and children are rolling hoops down the street..." (page 121)

...in a thing coat with the collar turned up and a hat that looked Cossack...(page 129)

...Edie in her big straw summer hat...(page 437)