The Group

Feb 04, 2011 Wayne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: both men and women

Recommended to Wayne by: the gossip of my aunts

Shelves: re-reads, feminism, americana

I can remember my Dad's married sisters discussing this book (they were voracious readers always) in the 1960's. I was determined to read it and finally got hold of it in 1967 when I was studying to be a Catholic priest. My Student Director immediately confiscated it, so I knew its reputation was still going strong.(He didn't see my two volumes of Nietzsche I'd also bought with money my Mum had given me for my 20th birthday - I'd only bought them because I'd already seen him confiscate a Nietzs...more

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May 25, 2008 Michaela rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Take THAT Candace Bushnell. Every woman who moves to NYC after becoming obsessed with Sex and the City should be compelled to read this book. Even though this book takes place between the WWI and WWII -- they'd probably be shocked to discover that the more things change, the more they stay the same. If anything, this is probably the most realistic picture of the dynamics of female friendships and their impact on male/female relations that I've ever read.

Frank discussion of pre-marital sex, birth...more

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Dec 14, 2010 Chelsea rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was surprised by many, many things in The Group (my first book picked by a book club I joined in Brooklyn):
1. I was surprised I'd never heard of it. This is apparently common among my generation, though. Still, my mom was shocked- it's one of her favorite books, and I hadn't known.
2. In further embarrassment, I was surprised it wasn't written so long ago. I'd read a good few chapters thinking it was contemporary historical fiction.
3. I was then surprised by how much I liked it, given how much...more

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Oct 28, 2008 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Sarah by: Seth Lahn

This is pretty much my ideal novel. It's set in 1930s New York and follows the lives of several Vassar graduates. There has been only a few truly slow portions of this novel. I laughed aloud in several parts of the novel. All of the talk of New York high-society, 1930s politics, Freudian psychotherapy, and modernism generally was like candy to me. All of these characters were pretty darn interesting to me and I was sad when the novel ended.

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Apr 10, 2009 Jon Stout rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Written at least a generation before my time, and from the point of view of women, The Group portrays struggles that every generation faces after graduating from college, though they are resolved with the distinctive flavor of each generation. The book starts with a wedding and ends with a funeral, and in each case there is the search for just the right way of handling the occasion, not too formal and not too Bohemian, with second-guessing from everyone. How will the parents be involved? Is the...more

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Dec 29, 2010 Keirstan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american, classics, fiction, favorites

I truly loved reading Mary McCarthy’s best known work, THE GROUP. THE GROUP follows the lives of eight Vassar graduates, class of ’33, as they encounter adulthood. The women, while divergent in personality, are essentially upper middle class women with one similar stain: they all wish to live a modern life, different from the lives of their mothers and fathers. The novel, however, centers around Kay Strong, the vibrant leader of the group and is artfully bookended with Kay’s wedding and funeral...more I truly loved reading Mary McCarthy’s best known work, THE GROUP. THE GROUP follows the lives of eight Vassar graduates, class of ’33, as they encounter adulthood. The women, while divergent in personality, are essentially upper middle class women with one similar stain: they all wish to live a modern life, different from the lives of their mothers and fathers. The novel, however, centers around Kay Strong, the vibrant leader of the group and is artfully bookended with Kay’s wedding and funeral seven years later.

At Kay’s wedding, a mere week after the girls’ Vassar graduation, we meet Kay, Dottie, Helena, Pokey, Lakey, Polly and Priss, “the group.” The wedding is symbolic Kay in that it strives to be modern, though the obvious force of this is emphasized: Kay’s parents are not present and the newlyweds are headed home later that night, not for a honeymoon. In fact, the group’s anxiety about the event is only truly quelled when Lakey brings out a bag of rice to toss at the couple as they enter the train station for Coney Island.

One of McCarthy’s strongest authorial traits is her ability to seamlessly transition into a different character’s consciousness. Soon after the wedding the narrative shifts to Dottie, the oldest of the group, a girl whose adolescence was plagued by illness. This attribute of Dottie’s exemplifies one of her most prevalent personality traits: her desperate need for security. Through Dottie, McCarthy argues that a “child of the depression,” like Dottie and the group, while excited by and primed for modernity, is conscious of the world’s dangers and desires security. The focus of Dottie’s narrative is her affair with Dick Brown, the mysterious artist friend of of Harald Petersen, the groom. The sexual encounter is tastefully explicit, but revealing of the character’s reserved but open views on sex. After the encounter, Dottie fears the unknown status of the relationship and eventually chooses another man to pursue as her husband, a man who is older and more set in his ways.

Another of McCarthy’s standout characters is Libby MacAusland, a “group” member whose post-collegiate career choice is publishing. Through Libby, McCarthy argues that the modern woman “between the wars” is ambitious, but still subject to the naivete of youth. While pursuing her career in publishing, Libby is coaxed to move down a different avenue: author representation as opposed to publishing itself. Libby forgoes her chosen field and successfully pursues this avenue, but also naively subjects herself to a potential rape with a man she thought would propose instead. The juxtaposition of Libby’s logical ambition with her childish attraction to Nils exemplifies two predominant traits of McCarthy’s modern woman.

Some of McCarthy’s strongest social commentary is revealed via Priss Hartshorn, a conventional woman with a successful marriage whose greatest concern is her child. In Priss’s narrative a social argument takes place, whether to embrace “progress” and bottle-feed a child or to accept and embody nature through breast feeding. This debate, one that is still discussed today, is well fleshed and as interesting to read in 2010 as it was in 1954.

THE GROUP is not only a great pleasure to read, but a wonderful representation of the post-Depression woman. Through McCarthy’s group, one feels a true understanding and appreciation of the mindset of the time. I truly loved to read this book and hope to find another like it soon.(less)

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Aug 25, 2010 Iris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

On "Mad Men," Betty Draper took a lazy afternoon bath while leaning out of the tub to flip the pages of "The Group" which lay propped open on her bathmat. The eight main characters in the novel had extraordinary intellects but small means to exercise them in 1930s New York. Betty had an Anthropology degree and total disinterest in motherhood; surely she felt that this book spoke to young women when it was published, in 1954.

Are you not much of a bathtime reader? This is absorbing enough to be a...more

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Apr 08, 2008 Jaclyn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mary McCarthy's "The Group" is both a story of friendship and an exploration of the social mores among the "privileged" in Prohibition-era America. The book explores the lives of a group of seven Vassar graduates, who had "grouped together" in a college dormitory and whose lives occasionally intersected throughout the story. The girls come and go in New York; some of them remain close and some drift apart as they leave Vassar behind and enter into love affairs, careers, marriage and motherhood....more

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Apr 24, 2011 Aneesa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Great Gatsby meets Valley of the Dolls meets Emma.

After tearing through the surprise ending, I would have given this book five stars, if not for the nagging remembrance of some of the long, plodding chapters from the points of views of complete ninnies. It takes some patience to get through these, but it's worth it. McCarthy is a master of satire and social criticism, and writing from each girl's perspective she manages to show the real motives, feelings, intentions, delusions, and truths th...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Dasha added it · review of another edition

“The Group” tell us the live stories for each one of eight Vassar’33 graduates. First time we meet all of them at the wedding of Kay. She now “made it in New York” and is getting married to a promising theater actor. All other women are wondering about their own lives, and that’s what the book further shows us.

It is an excellent story about the society’s changes in the United States in 30s and beginning of 40s. This is the time when, as one of these women points out, “the society is aiming at n...more

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May 03, 2011 Project rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: college, fiction, 1930s, new, york, vassar, feminism, relationships, childrearing, breastfeeding, great, depression, aircraft, identification

I'd read somewhere that i should read this book, and so when it happenstantially landed on the table at Book Club i snatched it up eagerly.[return][return]"Oh, yes," a colleague who was around in the days of feminism said, observing my grip on the novel, "That was the book that i learned about lesbians from..."[return][return]Apparently everyone in her Girls College had taken a turn at furtively reading the book and passing it on, and they had shown their solidarity with its messages by dutifull...more I'd read somewhere that i should read this book, and so when it happenstantially landed on the table at Book Club i snatched it up eagerly.[return][return]"Oh, yes," a colleague who was around in the days of feminism said, observing my grip on the novel, "That was the book that i learned about lesbians from..."[return][return]Apparently everyone in her Girls College had taken a turn at furtively reading the book and passing it on, and they had shown their solidarity with its messages by dutifully absorbing some of the catchphrases into their own cloistered patois. [return][return]It may have been a saucy read back in those feminist days, but now it reads more like a series of didactic explorations of the role of women in the 1930s through the hindsight lens of the 1960s, which is precisely what it is. The introduction by Candace Bushnell (of "Sex and the City" fame) seems to indicate that we should marvel at the assertion that women back in the 1930s (or the 1960s, more accurately, as that is when the text truly originates from) had sex lives and ideas about independence from men. Curious.[return][return]It's a good read, if not a rivetting one, but i found myself almost constantly annoyed by the way McCarthy strung her dialogue together into single paragraphs, rather than allowing each speaker a new line. Petty, i know, but there it is.[return][return]I also appreciated the way she brought words from the era (the 1930s, that is) into play so naturally that you could believe the text was actually from back then. Using 'alligator pear' instead of avacado, for example, shows a reassuring level of attention to detail. And any novel that can use the word 'oleomargarine' without batting an eyelid gets a bonus point, in my opinion.[return][return]Read this if you were part of a group of friends in college, or if you are interested in feminism, from an historical point of view. Avoid it if you are looking for advice on childrearing and, especially, breastfeeding. Though why you would want to be looking for advice on that in a novel from almost fifty years ago i cannot fathom.(less)

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Jun 16, 2013 Claire rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I didn't read this book until the '70's when I was 15 years old. I can't remember if I saw the movie on TV (in theaters around '66, I believe) or found the copy of the book first. I do remember that this was the first time I encountered a lesbian character despite having gay friends in school. It didn't seem like a big deal although years later I learned that Mary McCarthy's Vassar classmates weren't very happy with how they were portrayed in the book. I liked the book more than the movie althou...more

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May 21, 2013 Greta Nettleton rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A classic about an alpha clique of beautiful, intellectual Vassar grads who must transition into the real working world in 1930s New York City and find a way to make the rest of their lives measure up to the expectations they graduated with. So many details about their attitudes that ring true and ring modern too; Lakey's withering dismissal of someone's intellectual taste as "sentimental," the generation of the 1930s worrying about a loss of idealism and backlash among educated women, worrying...more

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May 20, 2013 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

LOVE. THIS. BOOK. I first read it about ten years ago and just re-read it for book club. And it's just as good the second time around. Following the lives of 8 members of the Vassar Class of '33 (as well as the horrible and memorable outlier Norine Schmittlap Blake [yes, really]), mostly in New York in the years after they graduate, the book is really funny at times (and nasty, too!) and just so good at capturing all kinds of changes in the lives of women in the 1930s, albeit white, WASPy, privi...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Suzi rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book cam recommended by one of those rare people, someone whose opinions about books I trust. It sat on my bookshelf waiting for a holiday, somehow I felt it was holiday reading. As I began it, on a beach in Cuba, I was thoroughly disappointed. The characters were easy enough to like, hate and associate with but it seemed so banal to me. I carried on, not having enugh books with me to give up reading one and somewhere, suddenly realised that I was completely gripped. I wanted to read about...more

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Apr 10, 2012 Claudia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mondadori, 1001-books, narrativa-nordamericana

Il libro racconta la storia del "gruppo", otto ragazze dell'upper class americana, appena uscite dal Vassar College. Finale veramente inaspettato. Nonostante l'autrice l'abbia ambientato negli anni trenta del novecento, i problemi femminili con il sesso, l'emancipazione sociale nel lavoro e nella famiglia, la ricerca di un'identità individuale distinta dall'uomo, risultano attuali ancora oggi. Quello che ci si aspetta dalle protagoniste, è quello che i genitori si aspettavano dalle figlie fino a...more

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Aug 15, 2011 Christine Boyer rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Women 65+ might enjoy the nostalgia?

Recommended to Christine by: No one

You know when you're in the middle of a good book and you have to put it down, you still think about the characters and the story? Well, that was NOT the case with this book! I never connected and never felt anything about it. Apparently, this book first came out in 1954 & 1963 and I think the reason it was popular was because it had very taboo content - at least for the 1950's. I could see young girls back then giggling and hiding their copies of it. Other than that, it's filled with flaws....more

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Oct 26, 2009 Catherine rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, mainstream-us

I adored this book. It's witty, intelligent, and droll; the prose is light and incredibly clever; the social commentary is absolutely scathing.

Published in 1963, but set in the 1930s, The Group follows the fortunes of eight classmates from Vassar's graduating class of 1933. As she tells their intertwined stories McCarthy pokes fun at, analyzes, and explores their ideas about sex and sexuality, birth control, mental illness, marriage, divorce, childbirth, nursing, raising children, observing soci...more

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Jan 13, 2011 Kevin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Who knew this was so… explicit? What kind of reaction did this get in 1963? I don’t think I’ve read such explicit sex scenes in ages--not there's anything wrong with that! And frank (but very outdated) discussion of lesbianism. And communism and atheism. This must have been banned. But, after all the juicy bits, it was just another pot boiler about a group of college friends and their lives after graduation from 1933-40. It turns out that they really didn’t have that much in common, except they...more

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Apr 28, 2012 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, historical, contemporary-fiction, chick-lit, women-s-fiction

3.5 stars. I feel weird labeling this “historical” but it does take place in the 30s and I guess if it happened 80 years ago, that’s history. It is, basically, 1930s chick lit. This book tells the story of eight Vassar ’33 grads known as “the group.” They are for the most part well-heeled but looking to do something different than their mothers. They have big ideas and big plans (premarital sex! socialism!), I suppose like most recent college grads who move to the “city.”

This book caused a huge...more 3.5 stars. I feel weird labeling this “historical” but it does take place in the 30s and I guess if it happened 80 years ago, that’s history. It is, basically, 1930s chick lit. This book tells the story of eight Vassar ’33 grads known as “the group.” They are for the most part well-heeled but looking to do something different than their mothers. They have big ideas and big plans (premarital sex! socialism!), I suppose like most recent college grads who move to the “city.”

This book caused a huge brouhaha when it came out in the early 1960s because of its “racy” topics, including the aforementioned premarital sex (replete with prophylactics), women’s careers, miscarriages, mental illness, domestic violence, adultery, breastfeeding, etc. I believe there was one episode of Mad Men where Betty Draper was reading the book. Norman Mailer called it the equivalent of contraceptive jelly and it was banned in at least one country. It actually made the author somewhat of a social pariah, she was especially shunned by former chums who saw themselves in some of the characters. Despite its phenomenal success McCarthy eventually admitted the book “ruined her life.” Amazing. It affected so many people, to the point that future television shows would one day use it as a cultural touchstone. I read somewhere Candace Bushnell was told by her editor to write a “modern The Group” and, voila, Sex and the City.

The girls in this are quite modern and there is much to relate to here. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them—Dottie, Polly, Kay, Priss, and the rest. I wanted more Lakey though, her life seemed the most interesting. Anyway, in this book we get to follow the girls as they’re fresh out of college and trying to figure out their lives in Manhattan. There isn’t really one through-plot here other than perhaps Kay’s. This is fine, though, I don’t think it needs one. I loved the ebb and flow of the girls’ lives, how they come together and then pull apart. Very true to life.

I didn’t love the writing style. It gets a little rambling at times. But I did get very into the girls’ stories and was rooting for them throughout. I think this is a must read for anyone who’s ever read or enjoyed “chick lit” in any form. (less)

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Mar 07, 2013 Greg Brown rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After tearing through Mary McCarthy's The Group, I'm kinda shocked that it hasn't been inducted into the canon yet. The book is a stunning, scary look at gender relations in the 1930s, yet so searing that it's a shock to see it was written in the 1950s. Even Mad Men, written from the perspective of today's improvements, isn't as damning as McCarthy can be about the oppression of the time.

McCarthy gets quite a bit out of the tension between characters being comedically wrong and worryingly wrong....more After tearing through Mary McCarthy's The Group, I'm kinda shocked that it hasn't been inducted into the canon yet. The book is a stunning, scary look at gender relations in the 1930s, yet so searing that it's a shock to see it was written in the 1950s. Even Mad Men, written from the perspective of today's improvements, isn't as damning as McCarthy can be about the oppression of the time.

McCarthy gets quite a bit out of the tension between characters being comedically wrong and worryingly wrong. And that's putting it lightly; some of the dialogue can be absolutely chilling, especially the prisoners who have learned to love their prison. Each of the characters seems promising and aware of their times, until they incidentally slip into some pattern of behavior that perpetuates the oppression of women at the time.

As far as those patterns of behavior, McCarthy has wonderful treatments of internal dialogues and how women at the time sort of reasoned their way through the world. More than their actions, it shows the assumptions and prejudices they worked under, and the rationalizations that justified horrible results for themselves. There's also a tremendous insecurity from the expectations of the day, primarily marriage.

So many of the dialogues would start with the character considering something and, like pulling on a sweater's thread, slowly unraveling what they thought they knew. Sometimes it's accurate, but most of the time you get the sense that they're just running around in circles missing some central lacuna. And so many of the dialogues pulled from the pop-psychology of the day, primarily Freud's. It's hard to imagine today how large his impact was, but at the time it rivaled Darwin's (and possibly exceeded).

Sometimes McCarthy steps back and looks at things from an incidental character's point of view, showing how these young women are perceived—and in that perception, constrained—by men and older women. There are yet other episodes that show the fruitless of their analysis and pop-psychology by upturning one character's inferences using the experience of another. in one memorable case, she has one character remember a party that was already described matter-of-factly, except this character's rememberance is overtaken by a single, surprising urge.

I was surprised by how much the novel was also focused on class: how it in some senses liberated the women of the novel to worry less about material needs, but at the same time gave them more to lose if they worked against the social order. It's hard to say whether class lended itself to more or less equitable relations—I'd guess more because these women had access to education, but it's hard to tell given the shared social background of most characters. It would certainly vary dramatically by region though, with women in East Texas not yet receiving electricity and expected to perform any number of back-breaking duties in a day.

That's not to say that our monied characters don't have terrifying experiences of their own. The mental ward chapter was especially scary, having gone through a similar experience myself. Kay's admission is still very similar to how it's done today, and is enough to drive one to madness if they weren't already there. Public mental health care in the US is like maintaining a fire department without fire codes, and it hasn't markedly improved in the last 80 years. One's husband cannot trap you in the ward merely on his say-so, but the criteria for release are still frustratingly vague.

This is in many ways a tremendously important novel to read today, even though things have certainly improved for the better. Most people today understand that it was bad for women in the past, but it's hard to imagine the ways that such oppression sustained itself. For so many historical studies of sexism and racism, it's a tempting answer to just say they were dumber back in the day; while this is somewhat true when you consider lead-poisoning and alcohol consumption of the day, it's a dangerously incomplete answer. Grappling with the particulars of how we demeaned women is gruesome but necessary so we understand that oppression doesn't come in flashing neon. It slips into your very ways of thinking, masquerading as a web of supporting assumptions that can't be eliminated until the entire system has been unmasked and hacked away.(less)

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Aug 16, 2009 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It’s important to know that the copyright on this book is 1954. Also, I should share that the story takes place during America’s Great Depression.

If you didn’t know these two facts, you might think this is just another book of contemporary women’s fiction.

The Group is the story of seven college friends and what happens to them over a ten year period. (See what I told you…Does that sound like a contemporary women’s fiction novel, or what?)

But this book was much, much better than any contemporar...more

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Aug 07, 2010 Caitlin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010

Reading this book is like drinking a very dry gin martini (shaken, not stirred). Closely observed, carefully described, always acerbic - this was a real pleasure.

I remember skimming through this at my Seattle grandmother's house when I was in high school. At that point I was mostly shocked that someone had written so frankly about sex during the 1930's ("They had SEX in the 1930's? Really?") - teenagers are always a bit surprised to discover a whole world out there that is outside of their own e...more Reading this book is like drinking a very dry gin martini (shaken, not stirred). Closely observed, carefully described, always acerbic - this was a real pleasure.

I remember skimming through this at my Seattle grandmother's house when I was in high school. At that point I was mostly shocked that someone had written so frankly about sex during the 1930's ("They had SEX in the 1930's? Really?") - teenagers are always a bit surprised to discover a whole world out there that is outside of their own experience. I tucked the book away in the back of my mind as something I should read at some point. I am currently reading books that were published in my birth year and this was the first. If it is any evidence of the quality of writing in 1963 then it was a great year for more than just me! I was completely floored by how wonderful this book was.

Written almost more as a series of short stories about the women in the group, the stories are tied together by Vassar, a wedding (at the beginning), and a funeral (at the end). In between are stories I will never forget. A Particular standout for me is Chapter 2, wherein Dottie loses her virginity. Ms. McCarthy truly captures the universal awkwardness of this event along with its own attendant pleasant surprises and does so in effortless intelligent prose. I loved one of the minor characters, Noreen Schmittlapp - utterly contemptible in some ways and yet so admirable in her ability to flaunt convention - she's a gorgeous counterpoint to some of the other more downtrodden and conventional characters.

This book makes me grateful that I was born during the era of Our Bodies, Ourselves instead of relying on Kraft-Ebbing for my education on human sexuality. I am glad that I have more choices than these women did (What the hell did they get such great educations for, anyway, if all that was on offer was to keep house? Better cocktail party conversation?). I am glad that I can't be institutionalized for objecting to a spouse's affairs and physical abuse (at least not easily).

I was just as struck, however, by the way some things endure - watch any one of the dozens of bridal shows on television right now and boggle along with me at the notion that this is a woman's only day, the most important dress she'll ever spend too much money on, the ne plus ultra of life - the more things change, the more they stay same (factoring in inflation, of course).
(less)

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Apr 07, 2012 Virgilio Machado rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

O melhor livro de Mary McCarthy… maravilhoso… um livro profético que prepara o terreno para os romances de protesto e libertação da década seguinte.

The Independent
http://www.wook.pt/ficha/o-grupo/a/id...

Mary McCarthy foi uma das intelectuais mais brilhantes da sua geração [...] Apesar de McCarthy não se considerar uma escritora feminista (para ela, o feminismo era uma mistura de «auto-piedade, histeria e ganância«), O Grupo tornou-se tão importante e resistiu melhor ao tempo – talvez por ser rom...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, feminism, marriage

I confess that I vaguely remember ever hearing about The Group by Mary McCarthy when I was growing up. I say this, because I got my love of reading from perusing my mother's bookshelves. I can't remember if I ever saw it there, but I never thought of it again until I saw recently a review of it in The Guardian (UK newspaper) for a re-release. It sounded interesting from what the article said and since I liked The Women's Room by Marilyn French, I decided to give this book a read. I'm glad I did....more I confess that I vaguely remember ever hearing about The Group by Mary McCarthy when I was growing up. I say this, because I got my love of reading from perusing my mother's bookshelves. I can't remember if I ever saw it there, but I never thought of it again until I saw recently a review of it in The Guardian (UK newspaper) for a re-release. It sounded interesting from what the article said and since I liked The Women's Room by Marilyn French, I decided to give this book a read. I'm glad I did.

I am always amazed, after completing a Master's Degree in English/Literature, to discover witty, acerbic, and personally and politically relevant women writers that were never mentioned in any class or seminar I took over a period of 6 years. Why had I not heard of Mary McCarthy? Was she relegated to the dismissive category of "popular" "women's fiction" when it was published? Was she deemed inconsequential by male academia? Probably all of the above. As one who questions the sacrosanct "CANON" of literature for its snootiness and creaking bones, it makes me mad that millions of young women will never learn about this book in colleges. If they are now.... then good for them. It's time that the "domestic" novel isn't tossed aside as trivial or unimportant simply because men aren't interested in knowing about it. Sadly, I wish this type of thinking was completely over, but canon-ites are a stubborn lot.

In many ways The Women's Room follows the same format as The Group. We follow several young women through various stages of their young lives. French starts from a first person viewpoint in a girl's childhood. The Group begins with a group of women who have just graduated from Vassar and are attending a wedding; the first of their set to do so. Kay is the compass around which all the women in the group spin like satellites. It's 1930, a year after the Stock Market Crash and before WWII. It's a confusing time for all concerned. When Lakey, Pokey, Libby, Priss, Polly, Norine, and Helena attend Kay's wedding they are all on the cusp of their next adventures in life; jobs, marriage, travel, more university, etc. They are well educated women and politically savvy, but they are precariously new and wobbly like newborn calves. It's tough to nail down a particular theme in this novel, but the overriding spectre hanging over all of them is the assumed privilege of men and though excellently educated, the limited prescribed spheres of these women. Politically, it is the height of the Socialist and Communist heyday in America. FDR is proposing the New Deal and Unions are forming. Science and medicine are confused and Freudian analysis is all the rage. There are conflicting theories about motherhood, breast-feeding, birth control, lesbianism, and free love vs. adultery. It was a heady time. And perhaps this is precisely why I and many of my friends have not heard of the book. It was published in 1963 and dared to assert that in the author's mother's time, these questions were openly discussed among the university and elite classes. The curtains were coming down on the sacred hearth and people's true lives were being exposed for what they were! It was an honest and searing glimpse. Perhaps that was too much controversy for the early 60s.

McCarthy's writing style is a little hard to follow at first, but you get used to it quickly and when she leaves a chapter, we find we miss the woman who was revealed in it. We see each of the women's views throughout a chapter and then we see the same woman's life from everyone else's view of the same events. It shows us that roles and masks do not tell us the deep secrets and fears residing in our heads and that what is said about someone can be so far from the truth as to be unrecognizable. No one truly knows what goes on in another's life but this book reveals that for women, there is so much more going on than the domestic bliss the men wish was keeping the little lady happy in the home. If they only knew! And they would know, if they would only listen. But the divide between the sexes isn't universal and there are glimmerings of hope amidst the racism and political and social ideas of the 1930s which reside alongside all those ideas that we in the 21st century now take for granted. It's hard to put myself into that time and experience the insecurity of some of these women; to raise a voice, a question, or challenge an accepted idea. As feminists we take so much for granted about what was always at stake for us; even basic freedoms like disagreeing with male doctors or even disagreeing with husbands, all of whom knew best for their women of course. These women couldn't even trust their own minds after an excellent college education! I learned so many things about that time period that I never knew before. We are all divided by class and education; these are the monied classes after all--but there are some experiences in women's lives that are universal.

The book is glorious, sad, jubilant, and heartbreaking, but it's not maudlin or overwrought. It's honest. We see these women warts and all and we may not like some of them. It doesn't matter. Candace Bushnell, who wrote Sex and the City, feels a particular kinship with this book and the review in The Guardian even compared McCarthy's book to hers, but they are vastly different. I admit to not being a fan of Amanda, Samantha, Carrie, and Charlotte who would never have the discussions that The Group had. I found the group to be far more nuanced and complicated than the mere sexual antics of the requisite blondes, brunettes, and redheads. The campiness of SATC leaves me cold and I've never identified with any of them. But I can identify with The Group and I'm still pondering why. Food for thought.

I'm glad I read this, but I wish I'd read this or knew of it sooner. Like every book of it's kind, are we ready to read it? Books do have a way of coming into our lives when we most need them. I think it should be on every university reading list. (less)

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Aug 04, 2011 Pussinbooks added it · review of another edition

Cathartic.

A work of pure brilliance which I imagine must have caused quite a stir when it was first published.

The female characters, whilst not always likeable, were beleivable - I found myself getting annoyed at times with one or two of them when they allowed themselves to be treated as second class citizens simply because they are women. However, this was not weak characters on the part of the writer, more a realistic portrayal of the submissive women at the time.

The male characters, however,...more

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Apr 11, 2011 Aviva rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book follows a group of girls from graduation at Vassar through seven years when they all gather together for the funeral of one of their own. Each girl is different in her own way and each girl is devoted to the idea that they're not going to be stuffy like "mom and dad". It was a big deal back when it was written because one of the girls was a Sapphist (which is a nice way of saying lesbian) who was in love with one of the other girls in the group, even if she never said so. This is, inci...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Joanne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A popular book written in the early 1960’s that follows “The Group” from the Vassar class of 1933. The group: Kay, Polly, Priss, Pokey, Libby, Norine, Dottie, Lakey, & Helena. The issues of the girls are somewhat dated: pre & extra-marital sex, contraception, marriage, husbands, work, motherhood, sexual orientation and preferences, the role of educated women and politics in the 1930’s concern sense, but still prevalent today.

I truthfully thought the book would be a little more exciting a...more

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Oct 27, 2012 Devil rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

With such modern language and unabashed discussion of taboo themes, no wonder this book was a phenomenon of its age! The style is practically the same as used by contemporary writers and, as other reviewers pointed out, the stories are not too different from what is portrayed in novels about women living in New York, such as Sex & the City.
From politics to sex to finances to psychology, all sorts of themes are tackled by the author unapologetically and without unecessary frills.
On the down...more

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Feb 21, 2012 Helen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found this really hard going and was not going to rate it more than 2 stars. I've now had time to think about the things that annoyed me; lovely, clever girls falling for the worst type of man possible, the way they allowed themselves to be bullied and cheated. Their constant panic over self-worth issues... and realised that this is what it was like for women back then. We've come a long way since the 30s! Nevertheless, the writing style was so grating and jumpy that I couldn't help wondering...more

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