If the idea of Girls set in the 1930s appeals to you, you will love this book. I truly believe that there has never been a better time to read Mary McCarthy. All of her work feels eerily suited to our present moment (and eons ahead of its time), but perhaps none more so than The Group, which tracks the lives of a group of young women after they graduate from Sarah Lawrence. Embracing autofiction before there was autofiction, McCarthy perfectly captures the vast complexity of friendships between young women, the ways they evolve, grow apart, and change in the years after college. McCarthy is empathetic but unflinching and unafraid to expose the absurd ways we behave. She fuses endlessly fascinating interpersonal relationships with biting political commentary and is compulsively readable.
— MikaelaWritten 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. "Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant."—CosmopolitanAward-winning 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.