Everything changes for awkward frizzy-haired Julie Jacobson when she's invited into Boys Teepee 3, the "hot little nucleus" of her artsy summer camp, by the willowy Ash Wolf. There, she drinks and discusses Günter Grass with five other teenagers who call themselves the Interestings, because, in the words of Ethan Figman, the group's unpretty, much-loved cartoonist, "we are just so fucking compelling".

Julie swiftly becomes Jules, an aspiring comedic actress, and much of this wise, entertaining novel, which takes place from multiple perspectives over several decades, is occupied with her obsessive nostalgia for "that place where her life had opened and spilled and thrust her to the ground, delirious and charged".

The group is rounded out by a passionate dancer, a gifted musician and an alpha-male heartbreaker, but as their lives move on, intertwine, separate and reconnect, it's only Ethan, who creates a Simpsons-like TV hit and pairs off with Ash, for whom things fall entirely into place. He reflects, as a middle-aged millionaire, that talent relies for its fulfilment on "economics and disposition", and luck.

The book is ambitious, encompassing Aids, autism and 9/11, but it's best when dealing with details, like the involuntary, guilty way Jules weighs the value of her life against those of her friends. The ultrasound technician she marries argues that "specialness" isn't necessary to live well, but it's not until middle age that she realises, "you could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting".

Wolitzer explores her themes seriously, but there's also enough lightness, pace and wit that it's easy to tear through the book in a day.

She has argued that sprawling novels by women rarely make it into the "top tier of literary fiction", and while this one isn't flawless, it deserves attention.