“I use Grammarly’s plagiarism detector because no one likes a capy cot!â€
I don’t especially like reading on a Kindle — click…click…click — but I’d pressed the Amazon wireless “buy†for Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings: A Novel so that’s how I read it. Click…click…click…all weekend, flying to and from Ottawa, Canada, where I 
was visiting summer friends and family. (A shout out to that great capital city follows.)
I am new to Wolitzer, though she’s written a half-dozen novels. Published in 2013, this one was getting good reviews, so I took a chance. I’m glad I did.
The Interestings is a long read full of — yup! — interesting people. It concerns a group of New York teenagers who meet at summer camp, and follows them for the next 35 years. They lead rich lives: one is an animator whose creation becomes a hit television series. The girl he marries is a theater director. Their gay friend Jonah, the son of a famous folk singer, is an engineer. Another flees the country, accused of date rape. The main character, Jules, struggles in Manhattan, embittered by her friends’ extreme wealth. A talk therapist, she becomes her family’s sole provider when her husband is crippled by depression.
Did I love this read? No, but I can recommend it. Wolitzer writes nicely; I was never bored. These are smart, decent people who — though they could — do not hurt or betray each other.
My sole complaint: it could have been more interesting. Wolitzer creates provocative characters whose relationships create a tangled web. Instead of keeping them in close quarters, she dispatches them to other parts of the city, country, world. They’re not in each other’s hair, let alone the same zip code.
From books to cities: let us now sing praise for Ottawa, a place where people embrace winter. Blanketed in white, under grey skies, it is home to the Rideau Canal, the world’s longest skating promenade. The canal’s location is central to the city; it is common to see people on downtown streets, walking to and from, ice skates slung over their shoulders.
Other highlights: the National Gallery of Canada, with its Louise Bourgeois giant spider “Maman†haunting its entrance. http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/category_index.php Also its collection of Canadian art and Janet Cardiff’s Forty-Part Motet, an installation within the museum’s Rideau Chapel. Not to be missed. http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/exhibitions/current/details/janet-cardiff-forty-part-motet-6857
Dining and shopping: For a club meeting dinner for 60 or so, friends chose the historic Courtyard Restaurant in Ottawa’s ByWard Market district. Perfect! Tasty farm 
to table food; excellent service. For lunch the next day we headed to the same area, to The Black Tomato, for creamy red pepper soup and smoked salmon on baguettes. Skip lunch at the Chateau Laurier; the service is maddeningly slow, the menu fussy. Grab a drink at the bar instead; no trip to Ottawa is complete without a leisurely stop in this celebrated hotel.
Finally, we found chic boutique shopping in the walkable ByWard Market. A perfect weekend.
This may be some of the least local of their products, but the Piggy Market does sell absolutely wonderful wild BC smoked salmon. I tried their Chinook, though one of the owners (whose name I never caught) put half the supply in their cryo freezer so that he will sell some in the middle of the winter. Extremely flavorful and some of the best stuff I have had. I recommend it when you come on by.
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