Imprint Friday: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

Welcome to Imprint Friday and today's featured imprint: Riverhead Books. Stop by each week to be introduced to a must-read title from one of my favorite imprints. I know you'll be adding many of these books to your wish list.

Don't be shocked, but I haven't read Meg Wolitzer's The Ten-Year Nap. However, the premise of her just-released novel, The Interestings, caught my attention, and I'm absolutely hooked.

Here's the publisher's summary:

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

I'm only about a fifth of the way through The Interestings, but I didn't want to wait before I featured the novel for Imprint Friday because it's arguably the book of the week. I've been seen positive reviews from major media sites as well as from bloggers. I've noticed an ongoing Twitter discussion (use hashtag #TheInterestings) among the bookish crowd, and Riverhead has had some events to celebrate its publication. The time to tell you about Meg Wolitzer's new novel is right now.

Here's what I know about the book and my initial reactions. The story is centered around Jules Jacobson. We meet her on the very night she's been included in the group of the coolest campers at Spirit-in-the-Woods, and we quickly see her decades later after she's become a working wife and mother. Thus, as you can guess, the plot does not unfold in a strictly linear way; it moves smoothly from the deep past to the present to the middle past and back again.

At this point, I'd describe The Interestings as a character study or maybe, more accurately, a generation or era study. Wolitzer interjects many defining cultural references—from books, drugs, and recipes to the first unexplained cases of AIDS—perfectly capturing the America in which Jules came of age. I'm especially curious about this aspect of the novel, because I know my own perspective must be fundamentally different from Jules's. After all, in 1974 she was at summer camp marveling at her first real kiss, whereas I was working, living on my own, and getting ready for my last year of college.

I haven't yet made up my mind about which of the main characters I like or trust, but nonetheless, I'm fully invested in their lives and want to know more. What made Jules stop perusing acting? Did Ash ever become famous or is she riding on the coattails of Ethan? In addition, I've noticed hints of secrets to be revealed and perhaps a less-savory aspect of the bond among the group.

Sometimes a book is worth talking about before you've finished it. I predict that Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings will end up on almost everyone's best of 2013 lists. And I'm saying that after having read only about 100 pages.

Riverhead Books is a featured imprint on Beth Fish Reads. For more information about the imprint, visit the Riverhead website. While there, explore their terrific book list, check out authors in the news, and view some fun videos. Stay in the know by following them on Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter.

Buy The Interstings at an indie or at a bookstore near you. (Link leads to an affiliate program.)
Published by Penguin USA / Riverhead, 2013
ISBN-13: 9781594488399
Copyright © cbl for Beth Fish Reads, all rights reserved (see review policy).

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Whose Birthday Is It? Three Masters of Observation

This month I'm celebrating the birthdays of three authors who are masters of observation. Because their styles and genres are very different, you're sure to find at least one that suits your taste. (Note that this series was started as a regular column for the SheKnows Book Lounge, but will now be posted here.)

Paul Theroux, who turned 72 on April 10, is as well known for his travel writing as he is for his fiction. In fact, The Great Railway Bazaar, about crossing the Eastern Hemisphere by train from England to Japan and back, remains a favorite in the travel genre. About 30 years later, Theroux retraced his journey, recording his experiences in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. His fiction often has a darker side to it, either psychologically (The Mosquito Coast) or physically (The Lower River) and is frequently set in non-Western locales (such as Africa, South America, and India). His protagonists are commonly writers (Hotel Honolulu), and he has even been known to put himself in his fiction (A Dead Hand). Wondering where to start if you've never read Theroux? I suggest The Mosquito Coast, which follows the unraveling of inventor Allie Fox, who relocates his family from a comfortable life in the United States to the wilds of Honduras.

Ngaio Marsh, known as the New Zealand queen of crime fiction, would have been 114 on April 23. Although she wrote some short stories and an autobiography, she is famous for her Roderick Alleyn series, which is set mostly in England. Born into the gentry, Alleyn is a hardworking chief inspector (later promoted) in Scotland Yard's criminal investigation department. The series spans quite a few years, and Alleyn's personal life progresses in each new entry in the 32-book series. Nash's own loves of theater and painting figure prominently in the novels, and in fact several of the mysteries specifically revolve around actors. You can, of course, jump into the series anywhere, but I suggest you start at the beginning with A Man Lay Dead and get to know Roderick Alleyn over the course of each mystery up to the final novel, Light Thickens. By the way, if you're an audiobook lover, you might consider listening instead of reading.

If you're a baby boomer, then you already know Annie Dillard, who will turn 68 on April 30. In the mid-1970s, it seemed that everyone was reading her Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, about her observations of nature in the Virgina countryside, where she lived. The Writing Life, a collection of short pieces in which Dillard talks about her experiences as a writer, is almost required reading for budding authors of every type. She has also written about "found poetry" (Mornings Like This) and two novels, including The Maytrees, which I reviewed in 2010. If you're new to Annie Dillard, then you must start with Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. If you want to read more, try Teaching a Stone to Talk, a compilation of short nonfiction. I have yet to read An American Childhood, her autobiography, which details her awakening to the world around her and the development of her observational skills, which have informed all her work.

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Wordless Wednesday 232

Symmetry, 2013

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Today's Read Plus Guest Post: Evidence of Life by Barbara Taylor Sissel

Wouldn't you love to have a weekend to yourself? Imagine that your husband and daughter go camping and your son is at college. Like Abby Bennett, wouldn't you be dreaming of all that wonderful alone time? Now suppose your husband and daughter are lost in the aftermath of a flash flood. Would you ever stop looking for them?

The following scene happens once rescue operations have begun:

It was one of those perfect spring days: a breeze fiddled along under a blue umbrella sky while the sun rose, a butter-yellow balloon above the sudden earth. It was the picture of innocence, a child's crayon drawing. Not one vestige remained of the horrible rain Abby had driven through to get here, and it disconcerted her and infuriated here . . . this weather that lay on her like a blessing, that wouldn't hurt a fly, that would take nothing from anyone. She felt mocked by it.

—Evidence of Life by Barbara Taylor Sissel (Harlequin / Mira, 2013, p. 36)

Quick Facts

• Setting: American Southwest; Texas hill country
• Circumstances: a father and daughter who may or may not have been killed in a flash flood; as Abby searches for them, she realizes she never really knew her husband
• Characters: Abby and Nick Bennett and their children, Lindsey and Jake; Kate, Abby's friend; Dennis, the sheriff
• Genre: mystery; psychological thriller
• Themes: marriage, trust, deceit, parenting, grief, holding on to hope, moving on

Guest Post

In celebration of the release of Evidence of Life, author Barbara Taylor Sissel stops by today to tell us about the origins of the story. Thanks to Meryl L. Moss Media for organizing this guest post for me.

Question: Can you give us some background on Evidence of Life and how you came up with the idea?

Answer from Barbara Taylor Sissel: As a mother, I’ve always been a worrywart. I know it’s pointless and unnecessary and that it gets me nothing except stressed out and sleepless. Still I do it, even now that both my boys are grown. I’d like to think it’s at least partly an act of the author in me that causes me to dream up a worst-case scenario and then imagine its consequences. But whatever it is, the scaffolding for Evidence of Life was built around this tendency to worry.

Then, of course, the news is filled with stories about natural disasters, heavy flooding for instance, where family members become separated from one another. I combined this idea with an unlikely setting: the Hill Country of Texas. It’s an area I love, that is known to be dry, exceptionally dry, except when it’s not. Floods there are rare but devastating events when they occur. The deluge can come on so quickly, dumping endless inches of rain in a matter of hours, creating flash floods, catching unsuspecting people off guard.

Suppose someone you loved, your husband and daughter, say, were to vanish in such a storm without a trace? What would you do? Sit home and wait? Or try and find them? How long would you keep looking? How would you sustain hope and for how long? As a mom, I wondered about these questions. Abby came into my brain, and I wanted to tell her story. I wanted to find her answers.

I have the same questions! I am looking forward to finishing the novel and discovering whether Abby ever learns the fate of Nick and Lindsey.

Buy Evidence of Life at an indie or at a bookstore near you. (Link leads to an affiliate program.)
ISBN-13: 9780778315162
Copyright © cbl for Beth Fish Reads, all rights reserved (see review policy).

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Review: Mira's Diary: Home Sweet Rome by Marissa Moss

Last fall, I wrote about the first entry in Marissa Moss's Mira's Diary series, Lost in Paris, noting that it was "fun story for middle grade readers full of mystery and history." Home Sweet Rome, the follow-up book, was released last week.

Mira's mother is a time traveler but is stuck in the past and needs her daughter's help before she can return to her family in the present time. In Home Sweet Rome, Mira must go to Rome during the Renaissance, accomplish a specific task, and safely return to her father and brother in the 21st century.

Time travel is tricky because Mira has to follow specific rules (such as not tampering with history) while she's trying to adjust to life in the past. She also has to hide the fact that she has come from the future. In Home Sweet Rome, Mira pretends to be a boy so she can establish herself in Cardinal Del Monte's household; there she hopes to discover how she can help her mother. When in old Rome, she also meets the painter Caravaggio and the philosopher Bruno.

Although the descriptions of Rome at the turn of the 17th century are vivid, and Mira's adventures have elements of mystery and danger, I'm not sure most middle grade readers will follow the deeper issues behind the story. Mira's task is too vague to provide structure to her trips to past. She is given the name of the man she's supposed to find, but she doesn't meet him until late in the book. In the meantime, she's sidetracked by the painter and the cardinal, and the urgency of finding Bruno is never felt.

On the other hand, it's hard not to like Mira's spirit and resourcefulness. It's fun to see how much more confident she is in Home Sweet Rome compared to her first experiences with time travel. As we learn in the first book, Mira is a budding artist and doesn't go anywhere without her sketchbook. The story of her adventures is amply illustrated by her drawings of Rome and the people she meets.

Marissa Moss's Home Sweet Rome may appeal to middle grade readers who are interested in Rome and particularly in the Renaissance. The back of the book includes an author's note, a map, and a short bibliography for further exploration.

This post will be linked to Kid Konnection, hosted by Julie at Booking Mama.

Buy Mira's Diary: Home Sweet Rome at an Indie or at bookstore near you. This link leads to an affiliate program.
Sourcebooks / Jabberwocky, 2013
ISBN-13: 9781402266096
Rating: C
Source: Review (see review policy)
Copyright © cbl for Beth Fish Reads, all rights reserved (see review policy).

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