The two strike up a sweet friendship that lasts after they marry other people. Ugly, kind, dear Ethan loves her upon meeting her at Spirit-in-the-Woods, but she can't return his ardor. She's a wisecracking observer and truth teller, even when the truth about herself is less than flattering. Her gaze captures the intricacies of friendship, love, sacrifice, squabbles, secrets, angst and loss.Īlthough the story hops back and forth in time, it is rarely confusing, frequently funny and always engaging.Ī Long Island girl who marvels at her inclusion with the cool New York crowd, Jules is the novel's center. Wolitzer spends the rest of her masterly novel filling in the details of lives merged and separated through the decades. 'Just by being here in this tepee at the designated hour, they all seduced one another with greatness, or with the assumption of eventual greatness,' says the narrator of the Meg Wolitzer novel.īy the third chapter, hints of that greatness - and inevitable disappointments - are revealed with a glimpse into the future 35 years after that summer night in Massachusetts. The half-dozen: Ash Wolf, a beauty her magnetic brother, Goodman Cathy Kiplinger, a dancer comfortable in the body of a non-dancer good-hearted Ethan Figman, an unattractive but prodigiously talented animator Jonah Bay, the guitar-playing son of a famous folk singer and Julie Jacobson, 'an outsider and possibly even a freak' who is invited into the circle and takes the name Jules.

When the Interestings are introduced, on the night of their ironic self-naming, the six confident teenagers - gathered in a tepee at a summer camp for artistic types - are impressed by themselves.

The interestings review