Just after my novel, Talking to the Wolf, was accepted for publication, I picked up Mary McCarthy’s novel, The Group for the first time. In my own novel, a friend breakup and untimely death changes everything for four women. These lifelong friends are heading to their 35th high school reunion dragging the overstuffed, invisible suitcases of middle age—including the ghost. I had heard of The Group before – wasn’t it best known for shocking sex scenes among the New York elite? While there were some parallels with the novel I had just written, I really grabbed a copy of The Group hoping for some titillation. But I was utterly absorbed by McCarthy’s biting social commentary that mocks and elevates the bonds within her “Group” of friends, Vassar class of 1933.Article continues after advertisement
The Group, published in 1963, tells the story of eight college friends who move to New York City after graduation determined to be “modern women.” Published the same year that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique exploded images of the post-war housewife, The Group asked uncomfortable questions of its middle-aged readers. What were the costs of being a smart, educated, ambitious woman in a culture that had not yet invented the term “Second-Wave Feminism”?
