The Interestings (Meg Wolitzer)

In this story we follow the lives of six young people who bonded together in a summer art camp in 1975 and who called themselves, with pretentious teen irony, The Interestings. As they progress to adulthood and middle age we see them grow and change in unexpected ways. Each of the characters is clearly drawn and engaging, and I was always eager to know what happened next in their very different lives. The events that happened to them and their reactions to them were not always entirely believable, but I was willing to suspend disbelief to stay with the story. In the end, it's not clear what point the author was making in this story, beyond "Look at these people - aren't they interesting?" Each moment was well done, but I wanted them to add up to more of a story and less of a picture of a life, or rather several lives. All that aside, though, it was good and I'm very glad to have read it.