The Interestings (Wheeler publishing large print book) - Hardcover

Wolitzer, Meg

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 141046220X ISBN 13: 9781410462206

Publisher: Wheeler Pub Inc, 2013

Synopsis

"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)
From "New York Times"-bestselling author Meg Wolitzer comes a new novel 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.

About this title

Review:

"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

"Wolitzer follows a group of friends from adolescence at an artsy summer camp in 1974 through adulthood and into late-middle age as their lives alternately intersect, diverge and reconnect. . . . Ambitious and involving, capturing the zeitgeist of the liberal intelligentsia of the era."--"Kirkus "(starred)

"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
"Wolitzer follows a group of friends from adolescence at an artsy summer camp in 1974 through adulthood and into late-middle age as their lives alternately intersect, diverge and reconnect. . . . Ambitious and involving, capturing the zeitgeist of the liberal intelligentsia of the era."--"Kirkus "(starred)

"["The Interestings"] soars, primarily because Wolitzer insists on taking our teenage selves seriously and, rather than coldly satirizing them, comes at them with warm humor and adult wisdom."--"Elle"

"Wonderful."--"Vanity Fair"

"You'll want to be friends with these characters long after you put down the book."--"Marie Claire"

"A page-turner."--"Cosmopolitan"

"[A] big, juicy novel . . . Wolitzer's finger is unerringly on the pulse of our social culture."--"Readers Digest"

"["The Interestings "is] so approachable one can almost miss the excellence and precision of its prose. . . . Ultimately The "Interestings" is absorbing and immensely likeable."--"Nylon"

"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

"Wolitzer follows a group of friends from adolescence at an artsy summer camp in 1974 through adulthood and into late-middle age as their lives alternately intersect, diverge and reconnect. . . . Ambitious and involving, capturing the zeitgeist of the liberal intelligentsia of the era."--"Kirkus "(starred)

"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 big questions asked by "The Interestings" are about what happened to the world (when, Jules wonders, did 'analyst' stop denoting Freud and start referring to finance?) and what happened to all that budding teenage talent. Might every privileged schoolchild have a bright future in dance or theater or glass blowing? Ms. Wolitzer hasn't got the answers, but she does have her characters mannerisms and attitudes down cold."--"The New York Times"
"I don't want to insult Meg Wolitzer by calling her sprawling, engrossing new novel, "The Interestings," her most ambitious, because throughout her 30-year career of turning out well-observed, often very funny books at a steady pace, I have no doubt she has always been ambitious. . . . But "The Interestings" is exactly the kind of book that literary sorts who talk about ambitious works . . . are talking about. . . . Wolitzer is almost crushingly insightful; she doesn't just mine the contemporary mind, she seems to invade it."--"San Francisco Chronicle"
"A sprawling, marvelously inventive novel . . . ambitious and enormously entertaining."--"The Washington Post"
"[Readers] will identify with these anxious, engaging people who struggle to live differently from their parents while coming to terms with their own limitations."--"People"
"["The Interestings"] soars, primarily because Wolitzer insists on taking our teenage selves seriously and, rather than coldly satirizing them, comes at them with warm humor and adult wisdom."--"Elle"
"Wonderful."--"Vanity Fair"
"Juicy, perceptive and vividly written."--NPR.org
"A sprawling, ambitious and often wistful novel."--

"Remarkable . . . ["The Interestings"'s] inclusive vision and generous sweep place it among the ranks of books like Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" and Jeffrey Eugenides "The Marriage Plot." "The Interestings" is warm, all-American, and acutely perceptive about the feelings and motivations of its characters, male and female, young and old, gay and straight; but it's also stealthily, unassumingly, and undeniably a novel of ideas. . . . 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 big questions asked by "The Interestings" are about what happened to the world (when, Jules wonders, did 'analyst' stop denoting Freud and start referring to finance?) and what happened to all that budding teenage talent. Might every privileged schoolchild have a bright future in dance or theater or glass blowing? Ms. Wolitzer hasn't got the answers, but she does have her characters mannerisms and attitudes down cold."--"The New York Times"
"I don't want to insult Meg Wolitzer by calling her sprawling, engrossing new novel, "The Interestings," her most ambitious, because throughout her 30-year career of turning out well-observed, often very funny books at a steady pace, I have no doubt she has always been ambitious. . . . But "The Interestings" is exactly the kind of book that literary sorts who talk about ambitious works . . . are talking about. . . . Wolitzer is almost crushingly insightful; she doesn't just mine the contemporary mind, she seems to invade it."--"San Francisco Chronicle"
"A sprawling, marvelously inventive novel . . . ambitious and enormously entertaining."--"The Washington Post"

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Book Description:

A heartbreaking, panoramic tragicomedy and a big American novel from bestseller Meg Wolitzer

About this edition

• Publisher: Wheeler Pub Inc
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 141046220X
• ISBN 13: 9781410462206
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 789