It's not as good as Freedom. So start there.
But it's pretty darn close. And I sat down to start reading on a Wednesday when I had nothing else I had to do, and I read 300 pages. And that day became one of my favorite days of the summer. So once you've tackled Freedom, Meg Wolitzer's fresh and moving novel should be next on your list.
You've heard the synopsis by now -- four friends, meet at summer camp, ironically/non-ironically name themselves the Interestings. Some grow up to be more interesting than others.
To me, the best character in this novel is not the protagonist, Jules, but her perpetually-spurned best friend Ethan, who grows up to create a Simpsons-style mega-hit called Figland. Jules may not have, but I loved Ethan.
Jules herself is another story. Jealous to the point of irrationality, she struck me as a less complicated, even less likable Patty Berglund. Which is really saying something.
But Ethan loves her anyway, and I love him for it, and their story becomes the story of all of us growing up through this much more complicated than we ever imagined terrain of adulthood.
Honestly, I do not know why everyone thinks adolescence is so hard. As far as I can tell, from my own (limited) experience & books, real adulthood (We're talking 30's here, people. 20's don't count.) is so much more complex, so much more painful, so much less clear.
And that is what The Interestings is about. It's about how nothing turns out the way we think it will, it's about success and failure, and it's about being loved, and how sometimes, simply being loved just isn't enough.
And it's also about being an adult and losing yourself for a summer's day and 300 pages. Which is a gift.
Middlesex is also about transformation. About the incredible universality and infinite multiplicity of the physical and emotional transformation that we all go through as we grow from children to adults. (Ok, I'm re-granting 20-somethings their adulthood in this second half of this post.)
If you are a book-lover like me who also somehow missed Eugenides' masterpiece when it came out over ten years ago, you are in for an absolutely incredible treat.
Middlesex is a story about a hermaphrodite. But if you are seeking a story about the seedy underside of the transgender world of the early eighties, look elsewhere.
This book is not about a freak-show. It is about how intensely human, and how intensely freakish, each of us is. Even when our hero Cal does find himself in the seedy underside of the trangender world of the early eighties, it is 400 pages into the book, and it somehow becomes so much more about universality than freakishness.
This book is breathtakingly written, flawlessly researched, and deeply moving. It is engrossing enough for a beach read but literary enough for a senior thesis.
Do not miss it.
