Review: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Just about as close to perfect as a book can get, for me. A big cast of finely crafted characters, a sweeping swath of time, big themes captured in small human scenes. "The Interestings" follows a group of friends who meet at a summer camp for the arts in the early 70s through the next four decades. Lovely to read from beginning to end, there's not much more to say.

I'd call "The Interestings" Franzen-esque as a compliment, but Wolitzer's humor doesn't work as well as Franzen, while her characters and relationships feel much more real. Less satire, more social. So to call this book Franzen-esque would probably be a disservice to both. But I'd argue that the elevation of Jonathan Franzen to "Great American Novelist" and the attendant controversy (see any op-ed Jennifer Wiener has ever written) surrounding HIM, has actually allowed THIS type of relatively plotless, character-driven, "reflection of our current times" kind of novel to be considered a possible Great American Novel. There's no leaden, thorny philosophical issues being overtly debated here, no characters feel like authorial stand-ins, no post-modern tricks, nothing heavy-handed -- it couldn't be easier or more pleasurable to read; in these ways I feel like it diverges from what might previously have been the "Type" of novel that gets consideration as a "Great American Novel" status, but this more egalitarian era (The Franzera?), it seems to be getting more weight and consideration. I couldn't support this shift more!

The way Wolitzer manipulates time in this novel -- she covers 40-or-so years -- is really unbelievable. The rippling way she moves the narrative ribbon from the "present day" back into the past and then forward again -- a trick that I often find off-putting -- was as elegant as anything I've read. There's a particular pleasure I feel as a reader when everything is so carefully, deftly, masterfully constructed that structure becomes invisible, and you're carried along as if on a white water raft. The water, just like this book, never seems to exert any energy, you're simply propelled unstoppably, joyously onward.

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