Wolitzer manages both to buy into and critique the fetishisation of the “gifted child”. Some careers take off others bump along the bottom – gifted children grow up into adults who have to pay the rent. We follow the twists and turns of their friendships as they go to college, have relationships and children, get jobs.
The action jumps back and forth in time, largely following Jules and Ethan, as well as Jonah, and Ash – who unexpectedly falls in love with and marries Ethan. There’s beautiful, ethereal theatre-loving Ash and her gruff, charismatic brother Goodman Ethan, an ugly, talented animator Cathy, a dancer, entrancing to all teenage boys Jonah, the introspective son of a famous folk musician, and Jules – a suburban kid with a bad perm, a recent bereavement, and a minor skill in comic acting. “The Interestings” is the name that six friends give to themselves, only half ironically, at an American summer camp for artistically talented teens in 1974.
The American writer’s ninth novel is a doorstopper, one of those 500-page Franzen-esque works following several people over many years, and just as gobble-able. In The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer proves brilliant at writing normal, unremarkable lives, investing them with just as much detailed attention and humane humour as the lives of the beautiful, the rich and the famous.
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