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‘Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant’ COSMOPOLITAN
‘A brilliant novel: honest, engaging and sharp as a tack’ SARAH WATERS
‘Lively, vivid and exceedingly entertaining’ SUNDAY TIMES
This groundbreaking novel celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2023. One of the first novels to frankly depict friendship, sex and women’s lives. It was a revelation and continues to inspire today.
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY MONICA ALI
Mary McCarthy’s most celebrated novel portrays the lives and aspirations of eight Vassar graduates. ‘The group’ meet in New York following graduation to attend the wedding of one of their friends – and reconvene seven years later at her funeral. The women, fresh from college, vowed not to become stuffy and frightened like their parents, but to lead fulfilling, emancipated lives. Who really achieved this – and what sacrifices and compromises had to be made?
‘McCarthy’s characters confront many of the same issues as their modern counterparts: sex and contraception, career and marriage, love and lust, fidelity to one’s husband versus loyalty to one’s friends and the attempt to carve out a place for oneself unconstrained by the gender limitations of previous generations. Its continuing relevance is one of the book’s most extraordinary attributes’ ELIZABETH DAY, GUARDIAN
‘A brilliant novel: honest, engaging and sharp as a tack’ SARAH WATERS
‘Lively, vivid and exceedingly entertaining’ SUNDAY TIMES
This groundbreaking novel celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2023. One of the first novels to frankly depict friendship, sex and women’s lives. It was a revelation and continues to inspire today.
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY MONICA ALI
Mary McCarthy’s most celebrated novel portrays the lives and aspirations of eight Vassar graduates. ‘The group’ meet in New York following graduation to attend the wedding of one of their friends – and reconvene seven years later at her funeral. The women, fresh from college, vowed not to become stuffy and frightened like their parents, but to lead fulfilling, emancipated lives. Who really achieved this – and what sacrifices and compromises had to be made?
‘McCarthy’s characters confront many of the same issues as their modern counterparts: sex and contraception, career and marriage, love and lust, fidelity to one’s husband versus loyalty to one’s friends and the attempt to carve out a place for oneself unconstrained by the gender limitations of previous generations. Its continuing relevance is one of the book’s most extraordinary attributes’ ELIZABETH DAY, GUARDIAN
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Reviews
One of my favourite books ever
McCarthy's characters confront many of the same issues as their modern counterparts: sex and contraception, career and marriage, love and lust, fidelity to one's husband versus loyalty to one's friends and the attempt to carve out a place for oneself unconstrained by the gender limitations of previous generations. Its continuing relevance is one of the book's most extraordinary attributes
Few works of literature can genuinely be termed "ahead of their time"
Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant
This is the book which has aroused considerable advance speculation and well it might; it has a tremendous reader recognition . . . there cannot be much doubt that Mary McCarthy is an exceptional social satirist, with a jackdaw eye and an infallible ear
Scalpel-keen prose, honed on ruthless wit and insight
Feels like discovering a thrilling secret. Its prose shows a master stylist at work, its aesthetics are striking - all ivory-tipped cigarettes, hand-pureed pâté, Vassar socialists in dungarees - and it has a surprise queer romance that twists the whole narrative into new shape. It's my new standard for a summer read: lavish, hilarious, smart and mean, like a glamorous friend you're torn between fearing and crushing on
Absorbing, funny, painful . . . I consider it a masterpiece
A woman of intellect and style
Lively, vivid and exceedingly entertaining
She is a sparkler, a very funny, very savage moralist, and a brilliant mimic
A brilliant novel: honest, engaging and sharp as a tack
Shocking, titillating, and acid-laced . . . the book still dazzles as a generational portrait, falters as fiction, and blighted McCarthy's life
Her greatest novel . . . marvellous . . . a prophetic book which set the scene . . . for the novels of protest and liberation in the next decade
McCarthy's dissection of this disparate group - highly educated but powerless in a world of men - is witty and merciless but tinged with sadness.
