All of her work feels eerily suited to our present moment (and eons ahead of its. I didn’t want this book to end, but couldn’t help tearing through it. I truly believe that there has never been a better time to read Mary McCarthy. Thus began a lifelong relationship with Vassar that was one of the defining characteristics of both her personal and her professional life. All this is expertly woven into the fabric of the characters’ lives.īut the themes at the core of the novel are universal and as relevant today as they were in the 1930s and at the time of publication: juggling careers and relationships, the intricacies of friendship, the paradoxes of attraction, the lure and heartbreak of love.

It’s savagely funny, sharply observant, beautifully drawn and completely absorbing, telling the stories of eight female college graduates in 1930s New York, set against the backdrop of the Depression the building and onset of World War II the suffragettes movement and the new rights and debates it has brought and the politics of the time, including the schisms within socialism and Communism and the shifting sands of social class. But by no means is this early chick-lit (and incidentally, it’s more biting and cerebral than STC no fairytale endings or earnest shoe obsessions here). The Nation 'An admirable piece of fiction and the best book Mary McCarthy has written.' - Saturday Review 'Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant.' - Cosmopolitan Mary McCarthy's The Group is a sharply-pointed satire of upper-class New England society which follows the post-college lives of eight Vassar graduates, class. And I’m so glad I did!Ī recent review in The Independent declared this as ‘the precursor of the women’s novel’ and that ‘without this, there would be no Sex in the City’.

After graduating from a prestigious Eastern university, 8 devoted female friends go their separate ways: one leaves for Europe, while the others experience troubled relationships. This 1960s classic has been on my ‘to-read’ list for ages – and the appearance of this new Virago edition, with an introduction from Candace Bushnell and a rave from Sarah Waters, was the impetus for me to finally strike it off. With Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, Elizabeth Hartman, Shirley Knight.

The group mary mccarthy review