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The Interestings

A Novel

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The Interestings

By: Meg Wolitzer
Narrated by: Jen Tullock
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£5.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends on 5 July 2026 at 11:59 BST. Cancel monthly.

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“Remarkable . . . With this book [Wolitzer] has surpassed herself.”—The New York Times Book Review

"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. Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction Celebrity Dream
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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
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I heard Meg Wolitzer interviewed on a book program, otherwise I would never have come across her or this novel. I’ve really enjoyed it, I was utterly engrossed and I’m very glad I stumbled across it.

Engrossing

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One of the best audio books I’ve listened too. The narrator does an excellent job of defining each character. The story is a long,’winding and fascinating look at friendships throughout a lifetime. I truly felt bereft when I finished listening, as you really do connect with each character. Recommended!!

Incredible

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Fantastic. A vast and compelling book, drawing you into the world of these well crafted characters. I found the narration difficult to get into- at times I found the intonation like an automated almost robotic voice. The voices for the different characters are great and eventually I got into it. Overall a fantastic audiobook and leaves you feeling like you miss the characters once it’s over

Absorbing and masterful

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I am so in love with this book. The setting. The back and forth. The storytelling. The characters. The prose and possession of details. The narration. It feels complete and flawed and connecting. A great companion for loneliness, absurdity, contemplation and growth.

An animated capturing of the human experience

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The book itself is nice but the narration annoyed me. All female characters got a very annoying accent, and speaking of accents, I think narrators should not do accents if they don't know how. the Icelandic sounded Croatian, the Indonesian, Indian and the Jamaican , no comments. they were minor characters but still.

ok, but annoying narration

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