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Overview
Written with a trenchant, sardonic edge, The Group is a dazzlingly outspoken novel and a captivating look at the social history of America between two world wars.
Mary McCarthy’s most celebrated novel follows the lives of eight Vassar graduates, known simply to their classmates as “the group.” An eclectic mix of personalities and upbringings, they meet a week after graduation to watch Kay Strong get married. After the ceremony, the women begin their adult lives—traveling to Europe, tackling the worlds of nursing and publishing, and finding love and heartbreak in the streets of New York City. Through the years, some of the friends grow apart and some become entangled in each other's affairs, but all vow not to become like their mothers and fathers. It is only when one of them passes away that they all come back together again to mourn the loss of a friend, a confidante, and most importantly, a member of the group.
Synopsis
Mary McCarthy's most celebrated novel portrays the lives, and aspirations of eight Vassar graduates. "The group" meet in New York following commencement to attend the wedding of one of their members—and reconvene seven years later at her funeral. The woman are complicated, compelling, vivid, and, above all, determined not to become stuffy and frightened like "Mother and Dad" but to lead fulfilling, emancipated lives.
A classic of contemporary fiction, The Group is a dazzlingly outspoken novel, written with the trenchant, sardonic edge that is the hallmark of Mary McCarthy's prose.
Cosmopolitan
Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant.