August Reading

August was a great month for reading.  At the beginning of the month I was on vacation and had lots of time to read.  Then through the rest of the month I had a pile of good books that I wanted to get through - and there wasn't much on TV to distract me.   I probably should have blogged separately about some of the books but ... I didn't.  Here is the list:

1. The Dinner by Herman Koch.  Two (Dutch) brothers and their wives have dinner together in a restaurant and talk about what to do about their sons, who have committed a terrible act.    This reminded me of a cross between Louis Malle's film My Dinner with Andre and Yasmina Reza's play God of Carnage.  I truly enjoyed this novel and the way that Koch played with my perceptions of the characters.  Highly Recommended.
2. Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan.   I am a huge Ian McEwan fan, although I know that others aren't.  It can't possibly be a spoiler to say that he, as usual, has a twist at the ending of this novel that is fairly meta and many people may not like it.  I did.  Prior to reading this novel I had taken to saying that I miss the Cold War.  It's an odd  thing to say, I know.  But I was born in 1960 and by the time I was in school the Cuban Missile Crisis was over and the world pretty much knew that if we blew ourselves up it would be by accident.  We had no "duck and cover" drills.  But we did have lots of government funding for literature and dance and art and "the arts" so that we could show those Damn Commies that capitalistic societies could have high culture too.  Some of that funding was up font and some of it was under behind the scenes through the CIA budget.  Now that we've won, no one wants to fund anything.  In this novel, at the end of the Cold War, British intelligence is funding writers.  Sigh.  Recommended.
3. Solar by Ian McEwan.   A global warming themed novel where the "work for hire" doctrine of intellectual property ends up being a plot point (ok, my non-lawyer readers won't appreciate that, but I did).  Parts of it were very funny, in part because the main character is somewhat atrocious.  Not as good as Sweet Tooth.  Recommended. 
4. The Mourning Hours by Paula Treick DeBoard.  A woman returns to Wisconsin for her father's funeral many years after her brother was accused of killing his girl friend.  Lots of flashbacks.  Somewhat predictable.   I can totally see this being made into a movie.  There isn't a lot of "there" there, but it kept me reading.  Good Beach Reading.
5. The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath.   I'm not sure how I made it this far in life without ever reading this novel.  I'm glad I read it.  Her portrayal of a young woman's descent into deep depression is searing while at the same time having many humorous moments - life is ludicrous sometimes.  Recommended.
6. The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner.   A young woman artist who also rides motorcycles is involved with an older Italian artist from a wealthy family.  I thought this was a powerful novel and I was particularly intrigued by how the main character was an independent interesting thinker who seldom said anything interesting out loud.  I think this is often true of young women, and the question is whether they ever reach a point where they become comfortable enough in their own skin that they can truly be themselves.   I like how Kushner captured the 1970's.  The world changed for women in the 1960's but it didn't change for every woman overnight.  Between this novel and Meg Wollitzer's The Interestings, this has been a summer of remembering the 1970's for me.  Highly Recommended.
7. Murder Below Mount Parnasse by Cara Black.   There was a new Amy LeDuc novel this year and no one told me?  Amy's adventures continue as she gets involved in trying to recover a stolen painting.  I really like this series.   As usual, mysteries are the genre writing that I escape to when I can't read anything else.  I recommend this one but you should really start with the first in the series. 
8. Blood and Beauty by Sarah Dunant.   Last month I read Malice of Fortune, a mystery that featured Niccolo Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci.  But the other main characters were Rodrigo Borgia and his son Cesar.  I wasn't sure I wanted to read another Borgia book so soon, but I generally enjoy Sarah Dunant and, hey, I was on a reading roll.  She didn't disappoint.  Her Borgias are much better fleshed out.  I always like how Dunant makes me feel that I'm really in whatever time period she is describing.  My only complaint (which seems to happen with every Dunant novel for me) is that she spends a little too much time "telling" me things about the characters and plot rather than showing me.  But Recommended.  And there will be a sequel.
9. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman.  I had a somewhat contentious relationship with this novel.  On the one hand, I spent most of the novel thinking "YES!  That's exactly how a large number of men think about women!"  On the other hand, I kept thinking "Is this REALLY how men  think about women, or if this is just how intelligent women like me and Waldman think men think about women?"  I'd like to hear a group of men discuss this novel.  If you are a single woman thinking about dating, be warned that this may make you give up.  Highly Recommended.
10. Crocodile on the Sand Bank by Elizabeth Peters. When Barbara Mertz, who wrote some of her novels under the name Elizabeth Peters, died recently, I realized that I had never read any of her mysteries.  I decided to start with the first in the Amelia Peabody series.  I've always loved ancient Egypt and, when I was younger, wanted to be an archaelogist.   I was somewhat disappointed, I found the novel rough going.  Too little archaeology in this first one - which was a shame because they were at Amarna!  I'm reading the second one in the hope that now that the characters are established, things will move a little faster.   Meh. 

That's it for August.  I've made a big dent in my "to be read" pile.  And I'm back to having less time to read than I would like.  

Summer Reading - June and July

I know that I seem to have dropped off the face of the earth. The bad news is that I haven't found time to blog but the good news is that I have found time to read this summer. I didn't blog about my June reading so I'm going to combine June and July. A number of books I read I thought were somewhat mediocre so I'm not going to say much about them.

1.  Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. I had this novel for a while but couldn't bring myself to read it because it was about a guy who had been in Iraq. I just wasn't in the mood for war But I ended up loving this. Billy Lynn is one of a group of soldiers caught in a firefight in Iraq that ends up being caught on video and making "heroes' of them. They are brought home for a quick "hero" tour and that includes attending and being part of the half-time show on the Thanksgiving Day Dallas Cowboys football game. Billy tries to make sense of why everyone wants a piece of him during this long day. Fountain captures just the right tone for this novel. Highly Recommended.

2.  Three mysteries by Eliot Pattinson:  Bone Rattler, Eye of the Raven and Original Death.   I was attracted to this series because it is set in upstate New York during the French and Indian War.  Not many books (much less mysteries) are set during that time period.  In general I liked these books and I will read the next one when it comes out.  But I was sometimes irritated by how the Iroquois were always noble in these stories.  I also found the plot of the third book ludicrous - I realize that Brits in the 1700's were tremendously anti-Catholic and so a character expounding about a plot by the Jesuits in the Vatican to defeat the British wasn't completely outside the bounds of possibility.  But [spoiler] - it is ludicrous that the author decided to make it the real plot and not just the delusion of a character.  Recommended with reservations.

3.  A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin.    All I can say is that Martin needs an editor who will stand up to him.  This is one of those series where I am enjoying the TV show more than the books.   Meh

4.  The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde.  This is the first book in a young adult series by Fforde.  I decided to read it while I waited for the sequel to Shades of Grey to (finally) come out (will it EVER come out)?   I have actually gotten tired of Fforde's Thursday Next series so it was nice to read one of his books and really enjoy it.  I will read more.  Recommended.

5.  Murphy's Law by Rhys Bowen.  This is the first in a series of mysteries set in early 20th century New York.  The main character is an Irish immigrant and this book spends some time in Ireland, England and on shipboard as she makes her way to America.  Once here she encounters Tammany Hall and many of the immigrants that populated New York at the time.  I feel like this has some possibilities as a mystery series even though I wasn't particularly interested in the plot of this particular book.  Rhys Bowen does a pretty good job of creating the historical world in which the story is set and that makes up for the weak plot.  Somewhat recommended.

6.  Bride of New France by Suzanne DesRochers.   This author turned an academic paper into a novel.  It would have been more interesting as an academic paper.  Meh.

7.  Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.   This is the first novel I've read by Neil Gaiman and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was funny.  I'm not sure why I didn't expect that, but I didn't.  Recommended

8.  Malice of Fortune by Michael Ennis.  Machiavelli as detective and Leonardo da Vinci as the forensic expert - sounded great in theory.  In practice it was booooring.  Meh. 

9.  The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussan.   I nice little book where old ladies remember when they were young and how they ended up how they ended up.  I can't really recommend it but there was nothing particularly wrong with it.  Meh.

That's it so far for the summer, but my August reading stack of books is looking pretty good.  I've finished a couple so far but I'll blog about them at the end of the month.

250 Years Ago ... July 6, 1763

On June 29, 2013, Jean-Jacques Blaise D'Abbadie, the new French Director-General of the colony of Louisiana arrived in New Orleans, replacing Governor Kerlerec.  D'Abbadie's main responsibility was to see to the orderly transition to Britain of the land east of the Mississippi.   Kerlerec himself did not leave until October, providing for an orderly transition.

One week later, on July 6, 1643, D'Abbadie confirmed the trade license and monopoly granted to Maxent, Laclede & Co.  D'Abbadie was originally from Bearn, only fifty miles from where Laclede was from.  He was acquainted with the Laclede family.  That connection could only be beneficial to Maxent & Laclede's venture.

But when the license was signed, Laclede was due to leave with the annual royal convoy traveling up the Mississippi one month later.  Since one month was not nearly enough time to put together the trade goods necessary for such a venture, historians believe that the venture had received the blessing of Kerlerec long before this date.

"Only Kerlerec possessed the power, patronage, and perceptive vision to sponsor Maxent's enterprise, and he had to have issued the trade license in 1762 to give the new company the time to Indian trade goods from the merchant houses of Le Leu in New Rochelle.  The sailing time from that French port to to New Orleans ranged from fourteen to twenty-one weeks, so Maxent and Laclede needed as much advanced notice as possible in order to outfit an expedition to the Illinois country by early August 1763, when the regularly scheduled royal convoy had to depart due to river conditions. "  Founding St. Louis:  First City of the New West by Frederick Fausz.

*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.

250 Years Ago -- Pontiac Was not a Car

By the early 1760's the British occupied the French posts at Green Bay, Mackinac, St. Joseph (Niles Michichigan), Ouiatenon, Detroit, Fort Miami, Sandusky and Niagara. But an occupation is not a permanent situation and in all previous wars control of the land had, for the most part, reverted to the powers that originally held the land.  So, at first the occupation was peaceful. 

"Except in Illinois country, the British occupied the old French posts without Algonquian resistance.  And despite the belts urging rebellion, most of Onontio's children apparently expected the British to act, if not as fathers, then as brothers. They did not anticipate conquerors ... British policy in 1762, however, dashed Algonquian hopes for accommodation on the middle ground.  Crop failures, epidemics, and famine, particularly severe along the Ohio River and in the Wabash country, swept the [midwest], and the Algonquians begged for assistance from their British brothers. Events had now put both their lives and their conceptions of the British at risk, and the British by and large failed them. The local commanders either lacked the capacity to give aid or gave it grudgingly. " White, The Middle Ground, pp. 274-275.

In 1763 reports that France was officially ceding Canada to Britain reached Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) and began to spread to the western posts.  The French inhabitants and the resident Indians were astonished and could not believe it.  The divide of the continent between the French and the British was so long standing it was probably hard to imagine the French authority leaving out.  British commanders began to receive reports from the Illinois that, although French troops were reconciled to the cession to Britain, the French traders were not and were urging the Indians to kill the British.  There appears to be no evidence the French were officially assisting the Indians in a rebellion, but the Indians certainly seemed to expect that French aid would be coming.  This may have been due to empty promises made by French traders and habitants who, themselves, couldn't imagine the continent becoming solely British.

The British had an experienced and intelligent expert on Indians and the Indian trade in a man named George Croghan.  Croghan warned the British that their victory was not complete over the Indians, who had not "surrendered".  He reported that the Algonquians were desperate enough to begin a rebellion and their past success against the British gave them confidence that they would prevail.  And, at first, they did prevail.

 In April, 1763 Pontiac called a council of war to plan an attack on the Fort at Detroit.  The British were not acting like Fathers or Brothers.  Pontiac was convinced that the British intended to open up widespread settlement in the Ohio Valley.  The threat of settlement combined with a ban on the sale of gunpowder to the tribes, which harmed their ability to hunt, seemed designed to drive the tribes eventually out of the Ohio Valley.  Attacking and driving out the British interlopers seemed the only solution.

The attack on Detroit failed, but this was only the most famous of the attacks that occurred in the spring of 1763.   All of the British occupied forts were attacked and all of them were taken except for Niagara, Detroit and Fort Pitt.  British reinforcements eventually arrived and the rebellion was quashed.  But Richard White posits the theory that this was a wake up call for the British in which they realized that, outnumbered as they were in the western country and (maybe as importantly) wanting the fur markets for themselves, they needed to work with the Indians and occupy a "middle ground" with them rather than acting like conquerors.  George Croghan said that the British needed to emulate the French when it came to Indians - they were "bred up together" and understood each other.

"There is no need to romanticize this relationship, Indians and French abused and killed each other; they cheated each other as well as supplying each other's wants. But their knowledge of each other's customs, and their ability to live together - what Croghan described as their having been bred up together - had no equivalent among the British." White

Pontiac continued, through 1763 and 1764, to move among the Indian villages of the Wabash country, fomenting resistance there and among the French habitants at Vincennes and in the Illinois country.  By the summer of 1763, France had ordered the officers commanding in the now British territory to evacuate their posts as soon as the British arrived.  The British had not, however,  reached Fort de Chartres, mostly due to resistance from the surrounding Indian tribes. So the people in the Illinois country continued under the administration of the French military officers at Fort de Chartres who were now acting for a foreign power.

*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.

And then there is the TV I've Been Watching ...

The first six months of this year have been full of many great television series. That's one reason that I've read fewer books - I've been too caught up keeping up with good television.

In April I blogged about what I had been watching up until then.  Since then I've been caught up in:

1.  Orphan Black.  I had started watching this in April and it finished in May.  Tatiana Maslany gave one of the best performances I've ever seen in any medium, playing about 7 different roles.  Some of them in scenes with each other.  Sometimes having one character impersonating another character.  On top of that it's a fun premise for a show and a couple of the supporting actors are very good.   Highly recommended.

2.  Defiance.  I also started watching this in April.  I've continued to watch.  On the one hand, it contains every cliche ever used in any space western.  On the other hand, it is set in a future St. Louis with the Arch still intact - how can I pass it up.  They've done a pretty good job of building a believable world but they haven't made the story very interesting.  What this show needs is a Big Bad.   Can't Quite Recommend.

3.  The Fall.   This BBC drama is airing on Netflix and stars Gillian Anderson (using her English accent instead of her American accent).   It is only 5 episodes and moves slowly.  But it kept my interest.  We know from the first episode who the serial killer is (and he is played by the same actor who plays the sexy Huntsman in Once Upon a Time - I'll never look at him the same way again.).  On the whole I liked.  Recommended.

4.  House of Cards.   A made-for-Netflix drama starring Kevin Spacey.  It kept my interest but I did not enjoy it as much as the original British production.  It lacked the laugh-out-loud black humor of the original.  And I did not find myself appalled at the thought that Francis Underwood could ever be running the country - well, not any more appalled than I am at the thought of most real-life politicians running the country.  And at least he gets things done unlike most people in Washington these days.  Recommended.

5.  Rectify.    This originally aired on the Sundance Channel and had the pacing of an independent film.  Beautifully shot, it moved very slow.  The story concerns a man who had been on death row for 20 years, since he was 16.  Now he is released and trying to assimilate back into life in the small town where his family is.  If you are a person who likes a lot of action this is not for you.  If you are willing to sit back and quietly watch a show that makes you think - go for it.  Recommended.

6.  The West Wing.   This is a re-watch for me although there are many episodes that I've never seen before.  I've finished the first two seasons.  I did not remember how fast the story moved - I forgot that the President's health issues were revealed in the first season.  I thought Mrs. Landingham was in many more seasons than two.  I forgot that there was actual physical comedy in it.   This is going to be my summer "go to" show when I have nothing else to watch.  If you've never watched it, you should.

That's it.  The Opera Theatre of St. Louis season has started up again and there was also Shakespeare in the Park.  So narrative is big in my life, just not in written form right now.  But I am collecting books to take on vacation when I expect to spend quality time with the written word.

May Reading

Better late than never, here's what I read in May:

1.  The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer which I discussed in this blog post.   Highly recommended.

2.  Last Friends by Jane Gardam.   This is the third book in the trilogy Gardam unexpectedly constructed around Sir Edward Feathers, his wife Betty and Terry Veneering.  I discussed the first two novels, Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat, when I read them.  I had no idea that a third book was even coming out until I unexpectedly saw it on the Barnes and Noble site and immediately snapped it  up.  I meant to write about it when I read it but just didn't have the time.  I did like this novel very much and was happy that Gardam gave Veneering his due by telling us his back story.  I don't usually finish a novel wishing for a BBC production to be made, but I think this trilogy would be a wonderful television production with great roles for older and younger actors.  It isn't necessary to read the first two novels to understand this one, but it adds layers of understanding if you have read them.  Recommended.

3.  The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.   I've seen this everywhere the last few years and one day when I realized I was going to be stuck in a chair at the salon for a couple of hours without a book, I stepped into a book store and quickly bought a book to read.  It was this one.   It is a YA novel, which is always a plus for me.  Flavia de Luce is the heroine, a young girl living in a decaying British great house in 1950's England.  She is a fervent student of chemistry and fortunate enough to have her own lab, where she concocts things like poison ivy laced lipstick to punish her sister.  When a dead body shows up in the garden she of course is fascinated.  There were times in this novel when the chemistry talk bored me a little but mostly I enjoyed the story.  Recommended.

4.  The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.   A series of chapters about the people who work at a failing English language newspaper in Rome, it reads like connected short stories.  Since I don't really like short stories that was not a plus for me.  The characters were well drawn. 

5.  The Kingdom of Ordinary Time by Marie Howe. The concept of Ordinary Time comes from the Catholic liturgical calendar in which the year is divided into seasons.  I like to think of Ordinary Time as the time that is not included in the Big Seasons:  Advent, Christmastime, Lent and Easter.   But Ordinary Time is actually its own season (even though it is broken into segments) and is the longest season of the liturgical calendar.

As a child, attending mass every morning at my Catholic grade school, I was always aware of the coming of Ordinary Time.  In my mind it was the boring time - the time when nothing exciting was going to happen during the service.  No special rituals, like there were during the preparatory seasons of Advent and Lent.  No massive celebrations, like there were during the seasons of Christmas and Easter.  In Ordinary Time everything was ... ordinary.   You just lived your life without the excitement of anticipation or celebration.

Marie Howe's most recent book of poetry is titled "The Kingdom of Ordinary Time".  Recently I heard Marie Howe interviewed by Krista Tippet on NPR.  Tippet asked her about the name of the collection and Howe's answer brought back those memories:

"...ordinary time originally meant to me when I would go through the missal when I was a kid. Remember, those swaths of time between high holy seasons was ordinary time ... And there was always coming — the coming of ordinary time, the coming of ordinary time, the coming of — and then first Sunday of ordinary times, second Sunday of ordinary time. I remember just thinking in a strange and wonderful way talking about everyday life. And, so this notion of like when nothing dramatic is happening, but this is where we're living. It's not Easter. It's not Christmas. It's not Lent. It's not Advent."

I had never heard of Marie Howe before I caught this interview and I was fascinated by her and loved the poetry that she read for that program.  So I picked up the collection of poetry and couldn't put it down.  When I finished it, I turned back and read it again.  Again, I meant to write something about this separately, but did not have time.  Highly Recommended.

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

After reading Lauren Groff's Arcadia last month, a novel about people with whom I found it hard to relate to at all, I was thrilled to read Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings.  From the first chapter I thought "Now, these are my people."

For one thing, most of the characters were my age (ok, they were one year older than me, but at my age that doesn't count.)  For another thing, although I never went to a summer camp for talented teenagers like they did (I never went to a summer camp at all), I did spend my high school years surrounded by people talented in The Arts.   And ... at the age of 14 I made friends for life, just like they did - there is still a group of close friends I get together with on a regular basis.  And ... while I recognized very early (by the end of high school) that I didn't have enough talent to make a living in The Arts (and so gave up playing the piano altogether) I still always wished I could have.

Among my group of high school friends, two of them majored in theater, one of whom is a working actor in Chicago.  I have no illusions that it is an easy life but I love to hear her talk about it when we get together.  People I knew from high school musical productions went on to Broadway and among that group, one of the nicest of them (then, and he still seems to be) is a successful Grammy and Emmy award winning Broadway producer, composer and musical director.

So, I very much could relate to Jules, the principal character in this novel who spends the summer of 1974, the summer that Richard Nixon resigned, at a camp for talented artistic kids, making friends for life.  One of her friends, Ethan, becomes incredibly successful as a cartoonist, eventually creating a television series as long running as The Simpsons and making tons of money.

Jules and Ethan date during that summer of 1974 but Jules finally tells Ethan that she likes him but "not like that".  They stay very close friends through their lives though, and Ethan marries Jules' best friend from camp, Ash.  Ash is an actress who really wants to direct feminist plays.  I'm not giving much away here, we find out all of this in the first two chapters of this long novel.   Another friend, Jonah, is a talented musician, the son of a famous folk singer from the 60's.  Jonah doesn't want to pursue a career in music.   Another friend, Cathy, is a talented dancer, but unfortunately she has the wrong body-type to succeed as a professional dancer.   And then there is Ash's brother, Goodman, who is charismatic but lacks, to say the least, direction.  These 6 kids decide that they will be friends for life and dub themselves, only semi-ironically, "The Interestings".

The novel jumps around in time: 1974 in chapter one, then 2009 in chapter two, and then back in time to the early 1980's.  This was clever of Wolitzer.  She sets up Jules as the Everywoman we can relate to at the camp and in Chapter 2 we find out that Jules is still the Everywoman out of the group.  Jules and her wonderful, but very ordinary, husband Dennis have a good marriage and Normal Careers as a therapist (Jules) and a medical tech (Dennis).   Meanwhile we also find out in Chapter Two, via Ash and Ethan's Christmas Letter, that Ash and Ethan are fabulously wealthy and now married to each other with kids.  How did that happen, we wonder.   And do Jules and Dennis receive The Christmas Letter simply because they are on a very long list of recipients that includes people who long ago were friends?  No, we discover that Jules and Ash are still best friends and talk to each other all the time.   But that doesn't mean that Jules isn't jealous of Ethan and Ash's successful lives. 

Jules spends much of her life thinking that she is uninteresting because she leads a Normal Life and not a life in The Arts.  She loves her husband despite, or maybe because, of the fact that he is so normal.  And at one point, in a moment of truth between them, Dennis dares to tell Jules that her friends really aren't that interesting. Wolitzer doesn't shy away from showing what hard work a good marriage is.  In fact, the life of Jules could have been the subject of a Small Novel, otherwise known as a Woman's Novel.  In fact, Wolitzer could have written a Small Novel about any one of the characters.  Or she could have written a series of Small Novels that would, eventually, cover the same characters and their lives.  But instead she chose to write a Big Novel.  And it is big - in length, in scope and in ideas.

The story Wolitzer chooses to tell spans many decades - the years between the resignation of Nixon through the AIDS epidemic, the 90's bubble years, the fall of the Towers and the financial crisis of 2008, ending in the present day as the friends enter their mid 50's. One of the things I liked was that each of these historical events happens off stage, it isn't dwelled on by Wolitzer.  Jules remembers that the camp was brought together to watch Nixon leaving office - but there is no actual scene in the novel depicting that moment. The fall of the Towers isn't shown.  The AIDS epidemic is introduced to the characters exactly as I remember being introduced to it in the early 1980's - the characters hear that someone who was gay suddenly died and there is no real explanation why.  Only later when AIDS was identified did you suddenly realize "Oh, he died of AIDS. Oh. "

This is also a Big Novel in the sense of having a lot of characters.  Besides the six campers who become friends for life, and Dennis, we meet Ash and Goodman's parents, who impose a family secret on Ash that she shares only with Jules (Ash's father is an investment banker at Drexel Burnam and I waited throughout the novel for its fall to happen.) We catch glimpses of Jules' widowed mother and sister Ellen.  There is the elderly couple who run the camp.  There is Jonah's Japanese American lover who is HIV positive, as well as Jonah's folk singer mother.   There are even Moonies.

But what makes this a Big Novel is that it is a novel that explores a Big Idea - an exploration of talent and lack of talent and and the affect of talent, and its lack, on those with talent and the people around them.  It also explores the relationship between talent and money (and the lack of money). Can friendship survive unequal wealth?   Can marriage?  Jules must deal with the fact that she really isn't talented, while her friends are.  Ash, on the other hand, is talented but could certainly never support herself on that talent - the fact that she came from a wealthy family and is married to the even wealthier Ethan allows her to become a director of small, critically acclaimed feminist off-Broadway plays.  Ash is talented but Jules is aware that Ash's ability to use her talent is dependent on her being supported by Ethan. This doesn't seem to bother Ash - but if Jules was married to Ethan would it have bothered her?

Ethan is a generous soul and is willing to help out Jules and Dennis, but that bothers Jules.  How much can you accept from wealthier friends in order to be able to travel in the same circles before the friendship is threatened?  Do you let them always pick up the tab at dinner?  Do you let them pay for vacations to fantastic places?  Do you let them give you gifts of money?  (I was pleased that Wolitzer was smart enough to frame this question as a gift of cash and not a loan.  In my experience - loans are much harder on friendships, making clear that one friend is indebted to the other friend in ways other than monetary.  A gift is ... a gift.)

Wolitzer also asks us to consider the price paid by a person who stifles real talent.  Jonah is a natural musician but because of an incident that occurred to him as a child, he refuses to allow himself to be even an amateur musician and while he develops a successful career in robotics he does not find it fulfilling.  Cathy, the dancer, knows early on that she will not be a dancer because of her physique and instead becomes a successful businesswoman.  Is she fulfilled?  We don't know because the friends lose touch with Cathy after a terrible incident.  And then there is Goodman.  Did he ever really have talent or did everyone just assume he did because he was so charismatic?

Only Ethan, naturally talented, manages through hard work and some luck and good advice, to become successful beyond everyone's wildest dreams. He is also generous.  On the other hand, Ethan becomes a workaholic and is ashamed of how he reacts to adversity in his own personal life.

At one point Ethan decides to use his wealth to bring "good" to the world by fighting child labor in Asia.  Ethan is one of the Most Powerful People in the World.  Is Ethan's high profile use of his wealth any more "good" than Jules' work with her low income therapy patients?  Why are good works by the wealthy valued more than the good that is brought by the less wealthy as part of their daily lives?  Why does Jules value her work less than Ethan's work?

And, finally,  is a novel about Big Ideas like these, written over a broad scope of time with many characters, inherently more worthy than a  Small Novel about only Jules and Dennis and the many issues of their daily lives that Wolitzer might have written?  It seemed to me, as I finished this novel, that this final question is the disguised-in-plain-sight biggest of the Big Ideas of this novel.  If Wolitzer leaves us wishing for more about Cathy or Ash or even Ash's mother Betty (or, for that matter, even about Jules' mother), she leaves us hungry for the kind of Small Novels that sometimes get characterized as Women's Fiction.  This is a wonderful Big Novel, but that doesn't make it more worthy than smaller novels.  It does however probably make it more marketable to what is known as a wider audience.  An audience that includes men.

Wolitzer is certainly aware of this.  And this Big Novel is certainly being marketed in a way that won't automatically turn men off.  Wolitzer must be aware of this too.  She wrote a New York Times Book Review essay last year  in which she pointed out how novels by women are often marketed as "women's" novels when novels written by men about the same subject matter are called universal stories.  She also noted that the cover art of novels written by women often make it unlikely a man will want to pick it up to read.

The Interestings has, I presume due to this very essay, gender neutral cover art.  When I went to my local Barnes and Noble to pick up a copy, the clerk assuredly led me over to where it was supposed to be shelved - but it wasn't there.  Puzzled, he looked it up on his computer.  It had just come out; he remembered shelving it.  "Well," he said, looking up at me, "it's already sold out."   I didn't mind waiting for the next shipment.  I just hope some of those early buyers were men.