By Nicole Desimone
Staff Writer
Relatively little of Meg Wolitzer’s 2013 novel “The Interestings” takes place at Spirit-in-the-Woods. Yet, the fictional Berkshires summer arts camp plays an integral role in the novel as a paradigm of liberation, excitement, and promise, particularly to Jules Jacobson, an ordinary 15-year-old girl from suburban Long Island who is desperate to escape her house and family after the recent loss of her father.
Spirit-in-the-Woods acts as a summer haven to privileged, artistic teenagers, most of whom seem to be from New York City.
Jules, though, is not privileged, artistic, or a glamorous urbanite. But she does meet a group of campers who meet this criteria. There’s the gorgeous and sweet Ash Wolf, the sardonic artistic genius Ethan Figman, the pretty and sensitive Jonah Bay, the talented dancer Cathy Kiplinger, and Ash’s captivating and defiant older brother, Goodman. The awkward Jules is immediately drawn to all of them.
The title of the novel refers to the name of the group of friends– a name “they began to call themselves…with tentative irony.” Really, though, the name is only partly sarcastic. Just their presence at this camp seems to make them believe that they are capable of great creative work. Their lives appear to be seeped in promise.
Their story begins at this unique camp in the summer of 1974, and Jules and most of her friends return for camp in the summers of 1975 and 1976. But the inevitable ends of summers do not split apart the Interestings.
During the fall, winter, and spring, Jules frequently takes the train into the city to visit her friends, creating a new life for herself separate from that of the quiet little house in Long Island where she lives with her mother and sister.
The novel follows the characters through the next four decades when the Interestings are all living in New York and dealing with marriages, jobs, disappointments, jealousy, and friendship.
Wolitzer creates lifelike three-dimensional characters who make both good and bad decisions and love each other, despite all the complications–and there are many complications. Her writing is charming, funny, and touching, focusing on ordinary and extraordinary disappointments and triumphs and how intricate and multifaceted friendships can be.
By the time I finished the book, I was sorry that it was over and I continued to think about the characters.
Above all, it’s a story about fulfilled and unfulfilled potential and what really deems one’s life a success. And despite all that happened over the course of those forty years of the characters’ lives, I still find myself thinking about the simple feverishness of six teenagers, sitting together in a teepee in the woods, waiting for their lives to begin. And, like Jules, I can’t help but feel nostalgic.
