Reviews with content warning for Death - The Interestings

Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

10 reviews

taylorbrooke's review against another edition

3.5

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

starspeak7's review against another edition

2.0

Content Warnings

genevieve_rice's review against another edition

5.0

challenging emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

mary53's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional hopeful reflective relaxing sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Saga of the lives of a group of friends who meet at a summer arts camp during an intense period of adolescence. What happens to each of them (some much more than others) and their continuing relationships are the primary focus of the book. Having had experiences similar to all of them, I have found myself thinking about each of them a great deal.

Content Warnings

savyelizabeth's review against another edition

3.5

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

geohawk's review against another edition

3.25

hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The characters are all flawed, and some have interesting personal arcs. There is a lot of dwelling on physical beauty, which is interesting given it follows the characters from their teen years to their 50s.

I think it helps that the two most present characters, Jules and Ethan, were both outsiders with some level of self-awareness. Placing Ethan in the role of a Matt Groening-type (bringing adult-targeted animation to primetime TV a half-decade before The Simpsons would premiere) probably is not important but it raised my hackles. Jules' story makes a lot more sense, is very believable, as is her prickly nature. The portrayal of her husband's depression was moving to me, as well.

The author uses non-linear framing in a way that probably brings more interest to a story of aging and reflection that probably wouldn't sustain a straightforward sequential narrative of 40 years. The scenes are largely set well. The dialogue is hard to take, as it is largely between people who are fully aware of their own wit and status. In many ways, it felt like the movie Metropolitan but drawing out the story to see the debutantes full lives.

It was not an easy read for me. It took two months, and there are a lot of easy places in the book to set it down and never think of it again. The hook is that many readers will recognize themselves in the teenage years of these younger boomers. After that, it falls into the trap of many NYC-centric stories, where familiarity with the city it's geography and it's recent history would help with many of the environmental aspects of the setting. Jules, with her envy, and her middle-class background and adult existence, is the easiest to latch onto, even if she isn't really funny.

Content Warnings

readingoverbreathing's review against another edition

3.0

reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This is a difficult one for me to rate, because as much as I disliked most of the characters and thought the plot was lacking the emotional depth it really needed to carry this story, I did find myself swept up in it all anyways. Crafting a story that takes place across decades is no easy feat, but Wolitzer's writing definitely has a seductive, thoughtfully human quality to it that really saved this book for me.

But let's first talk about the characters.

I hated Jules. As conscious as she might have been of her own envy, as much as she never truly let it get in the way of her relationships, I still could not stand her. Let's not forget that when she

accidentally revealed her best friend's lifelong family secret to her husband

, her reaction afterward was "Before we get into that, can we talk about me in all of this?". That one line elicited a rare, physical gut reaction from me. Who, in those circumstances, says something like that?

I wouldn't go as far as to characterize Jules as a pick-me girl, but there is definitely a lot of "not like the other girls" energy about her. I'm pretty sure Ethan even says something to her to that effect.

As for everyone else, the only person I really liked was Ethan. Everyone else felt either too flat or too self-absorbed for me to connect with them. I think Ash's character in particular had a lot of potential, but, despite her own staunch feminism, she becomes this stereotypical perfect woman, beautiful, talented, the perfect wife and mother. I wish Wolitzer had played with her perspective at least a little bit. I think by choosing to narrate only from Jules, Ethan, and Jonah's perspectives, the story lost a lot of the depth it could have had. It's very much skewed in favor of poor, poor Jules; even Ethan's point of view is rather disgustingly consumed by thoughts of her. We actually barely see any of Jonah, whom I think also had a lot of wasted potential. Wolitzer bases his entire character around one childhood trauma and pretty much refuses to define him otherwise aside from his token gayness.

That all brings us onto the plot itself, my other major complaint. One of the book's defining plot points,

Goodman's rape of Cathy

, had such a sense of unreality to it, at least for me, that it was difficult to take the rest of the book seriously. I think some of this was perhaps because we were pretty removed from the event which didn't happen on page, and that a lot of the characters refused to think too hard about what happened after the fact. But this particular case was a pretty big signifier for the rest of the book, in that, as I mentioned above, there just seemed to be a lack of emotional reality to much of the plot. So much felt so surface level, like the characters themselves were half numb.

I found the choice to end the book by literally

killing off Ethan quite frankly lazy and uninspired

. It was clear that Wolitzer simply could not think of any other way to end this story, and I did not appreciate the fact that she chose

to eliminate the only character that I actually truly liked

to accomplish this.

The negative largely out of the way, I will admit to some positives. Usually books with fake famous people really bother me, but I think because we saw the slow steady rise of Ethan and Ash's fame, that actually turned out to be one of the most believable aspects. So that was a surprise.

As I said above, though this book is quite long, Wolitzer is an excellent writer and really does suck you into this story. There's a kind of creativity to a lot of the details she includes that I always appreciate, especially in something like this that covers so much time and where it's easy to cut more of the day-to-day.

Overall, I remain for the most part in the middle about this. It's not for everyone, but it does have a certain appeal, especially if you're a fan of a decades-long character study or anything set in the 70s/80s. I would in fact pitch this as A Little Life meets Daisy Jones & The Six, just with a lot less trauma and a little less music. Take all of that as you will.

Content Warnings