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The Group Paperback – September 16, 1991

by Mary McCarthy (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 2,045 ratings
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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. "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.

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Previous page
  1. Part of series
    The Collected Novels Volume One
  2. Print length
    496 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publication date
    September 16, 1991
  5. Dimensions
    5.31 x 1.19 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0156372088
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0156372084
  8. See all details
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  1. All I knew that night was that I believed in something and couldn’t express it, while your team believed in nothing but knew how to say it—in other men’s words.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A witty, moving, instructive and wise novel¾a gem of American social history as well as very good fiction." -- The Nation

"An admirable piece of fiction and the best book [Mary McCarthy] has written." -- Saturday Review

"Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant." -- Cosmopolitan

Mary McCarthy's The Group is a sharply-pointed satire of upper-class New England society which follows the post-college lives of eight Vassar graduates, class of '33. Helena was registered for Vassar at birth; Pokey forged her mother's signature on her college application in defiance of the family tradition of "being dim-witted and vain of it." Out in the "real" world, Dottie loses her virginity to a "bad sort" but discovers that she enjoys sex, while Kay subsumes her own talent to the artistic "genius" of her egocentric and philandering husband. Libby writes book reviews that are almost as long as the original material and Polly works as a nurse, while Priss is forced by her pediatrician-husband to go against "tradition" and her inclinations and breastfeed her baby, as proof of his theories. Elinor "Lakey" Eastlake, the sleek, rich leader of the group, travels about Europe and ultimately returns, full of surprises. Adopting the non-stop, generally well-intentioned, but hopelessly narrow-minded voice that typifies the worst of the group, Mary McCarthy filets Ivy League society, socialism, 1930s child-rearing practices, sexual double-standards, psychoanalysis, and men in general. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister

About the Author

MARY MCCARTHY (1912–1989) was an award-winning short-story writer, bestselling novelist, essayist, and critic. She was the author of The Stones of Florence and Birds of America, among other books.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books Classics; First Edition (September 16, 1991)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0156372088
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0156372084
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.06 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 1.19 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 2,045 ratings

About the author

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Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy

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Mary Therese McCarthy (June 21, 1912 – October 25, 1989) was an American author, critic and political activist.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Dick DeMarsico, World Telegram staff photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
2,045 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Fleurcat
5.0 out of 5 stars Why didn't I know?
Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2023
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I generally think the canned question about what I used this product for is thoughtless for books. But in this case it makes sense. As a reading experience for people living about 100 years after it takes place
I might not recommend it for the story. But from older teenagers on up, all genders, I think everyone would find a lot of interest. And information in a lot of fields: medicine, anthropology, sociology, mental health care, the recently topical again facism, babies: making them, preventing them, feeding AND the potty. A comeuppance for every know-it-all. Shocking in its day, surprising and rewarding now.
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Gabby M
4.0 out of 5 stars The More Things Change
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2016
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Stories about female friendships and how they grow and change over time and through life experiences are catnip to me. Mary McCarthy's The Group follows eight young women who graduate from Vassar in 1933 and the course their lives take over the next seven years. The novel kicks off with the rather impulsive wedding of one of their number, Kay, to her long-distance and mysterious boyfriend Harald almost immediately after graduation. Kay's marriage (and its deterioration) make up the most coherent through-line of the story, which follows the members of the group one at a time as they make their way in the world (the world being 1930's New York for the most part) and continue to be involved in each other's lives. McCarthy's writing is sharp and insightful, and the characters she writes feel very real...all of them are self-deluding to some extent and McCarthy lets you "watch" them do it through her narration of their lives.

What struck me as I read this book, which was apparently enormously popular when it was published in the 60s, was how even though it was written 50 years ago and takes place another 30 years before that, it was so modern in many ways. Sure, some of the references are pretty dated, but the challenges these women face are largely similar to the ones we're continuing to face today: the difference between sex and love (and wanting the former to mean the latter even when you know it doesn't), dead-end relationships, sexism in the workplace, sexuality, marriage, raising kids. There's a character, Priss, who has a child and is struggling with the decision of whether to breast feed or bottle feed and the way she feels like she's doing it wrong depending on who's she's talking to. The Mommy Wars feel very current and endemic to the current social media-laden climate, but this book makes it obvious that it goes back waaay further than that. It's easy to feel like the stuff your generation is facing is new and different than the things that previous generations struggled with, but it's really much more similar than you might think. Plus ca change and all that.
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KFDP
3.0 out of 5 stars Long. Odd characters. Odd subjects for the time. But, need to read to the end if you're going to read it.
Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2018
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Probably a 3.5. Interesting writing style. At times a little hard to follow, but not impossible. I never could get to a point where I cared enough about the characters to care what happened to them. Although the ending has some positive wrap-up. I'd say, if you're going to read it, definitely read it all the way through. I didn't connect much to the Communist aspect of it all. Probably just an area of history that I was not exposed to in this way. The story felt more like a 1960s story wrapped in a 1930s wrapper. Once I realized the author was born in 1912, I can say I was probably mistaken in my judgement.
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Allen Smalling
5.0 out of 5 stars Three Million Strong and Counting
Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2015
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McCarthy's brainchild spans seven years in the lives of eight Vassar graduates of varying means and intellectual candle power, from their graduation in 1933 and their settling in New York City, to the eve of American involvement in World War Two. It is much to Mary McCarthy's credit, I think, that the book with its large cast does not pretend to have "the last word" about how to cope with the Depression and its economic dislocations, with men, or with life in general. The closest thing to a central character, Kay, is presumably the one who will have the world by the tail, but hers is a saga of increasing loss, betrayal and bitterness beginning with her training as a sales clerk at R.H. Macy and her marriage to a superficially appealing but ineffectual and selfish man. The smartest and most fashionable character, Lakey, disappears into Europe for most of the book, thoughtfully remembering to send stunning wedding presents, then returns to America toward the end of the book with a surprise in tow. One of the women is accidentally shunted to the mental ward of a prestigious hospital, and if not for the physician husband of a fellow Group member, might have had to fight her way out. Another one, Pokey, is so fortunate as to live in a rich family barely affected by the Depression, which offers a delightful, Jeevesian portrait of a rich family run on auto-pilot by a super-efficient butler. The men are a mixed bag: the appropriately named Dick makes sexual inroads among the unmarried of the Group but disappears when they marry. Harald Petersen, Kay's husband, is a would-be playwright employed marginally in the theater and enough to sidetrack any spouse's dreams. Other men, being less of the jerk, provide less drama but are discussed.

I think it fair to say that THE GROUP embodies some of the feminist outlook of THE FEMINIST MYSTIQUE and the smart-woman's viewpoint in novel form of THE BELL JAR (all three books were first published in 1963 but THE BELL JAR was not available to American readers until 1967). What is difficult to convey is McCarthy's polished writing, which slips in and out of satire (and sometimes, when her characters speak with internal monologue, are just 'unreliable' enough in their narration that we reader know what's going on better than the narrator does). "Sardonic" is often the word used to describe McCarthy's writing in this book, and while it is crisp (sometimes to the point of being knife-like), it is not really a particular send-up or lampoon of any Depression-era class or of the Thirties themselves.

I was astonished that one reviewer here opined that the reader "MUST be scholarly and well finished in the all of the arts, and several foreign languages, to understand the subtleties." Gentle reader, I counted three instances of French: "crepe de chine" to describe a dress collar, "faiblesse" which means weakness, and "mauvaise fille" (bad girl). Other than a line of Dante one character's father spouts, that is it for foreign languages. Considering that McCarthy could have inflicted much worse on us, including Yiddish and German, we got off easily. She wanted this book to be read, and it was.

At times, the troubles faced by these women, the deteriorating economy, parental calls to "come home" (and abandon NYC) and the vagaries of spousal moods, bottle-feeding and child-rearing, did seem to have a distinct "Thirties" cast. This is, after all, social history in the form of a novel, and contemporary politics as well as the New Deal's "alphabet soup" agencies are discussed. But then I run across a passage like this where Priss muses about her physician husband Sloan and wonder if things have really changed that much at all: "There was a side of Sloan, she had decided, that she mistrusted, a side that she summed up by saying he was a Republican. Up to now this had not mattered; most men she knew were Republicans--it was almost part of being a man. But she did not like the idea of a Republican controlling the destiny of a helpless baby..."

THE GROUP has sold three million copies with more in store. In the Sixties, writers of substance often wrote substantial novels that also became very popular. I recommend THE GROUP.
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Bill McNeil
5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading for gender politics
Reviewed in Canada on August 16, 2019
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Revelatory - for men and women alike
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Client d'Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars RAS
Reviewed in France on September 8, 2019
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Pour le lire
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princess_88
5.0 out of 5 stars Classic
Reviewed in Germany on November 4, 2018
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A real Classic about a group of girls and their lives after their graduation in the 30s in NYC. Love and tragedies tie them together. An early Sex and the City but more profound, intense and dramatic.
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Ross McDougall
4.0 out of 5 stars lived up to expectations
Reviewed in Australia on June 7, 2017
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A mid 30's exploration of society, life and other sexy and nasty things through the eyes of eight young women grads? Sign me up!
Although it's not crying out to be read by me, I decided to take this book on after hearing it was a favourite of a reviewer I enjoy hearing from.

Well it is definitely a deep dive into the time; fashion, relationships, culture, society, class, privilege and all manner of matters are discussed in detail in the Group. McCarthy's language is adept at painting a vivid picture of the scenes, sights and sounds our characters are exposed to (and seek out). It was very easy to fall into a trance-like state as more and more details are added to the scene in your head and as it rises and reaches its climax (sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally).

I listened to this as an audiobook, and I find the number of characters in it to be at about the limit for a single-performer recording. Lorelei King does an excellent job of giving all the characters enough individuality, but I think this story teeters on being more engaging as a multi-cast recording. Journeying with the whole group through their various trials and tribulations was as exciting and nerve-wracking for me as it was for them, and I think McCarthys' tone is all the more robust due to the semi-autobiographical nature of the novel.

The treatment of women in society as well as the general class-tone to society is always somewhat uncomfortable to see in historically set works, but in The Group it is often outright jarring to see from the perspective of the women. I wonder if as in the book it's just accepted as 'the way things are' would fly with me back in the 30s, but i'll just have to ponder that for myself and continue to work to dilute such discrimination where I see it. But enough about me...

The Group really only loses marks as the subject matter is far from appealing to me, but I can very much appreciate the revolution it encouraged upon first publication just as I am able to understand the gravitas that a period drama brings to the medium while wanting to get far away from it should it be screening.

This was a fun excursion from my normal fare, and has encouraged me to seek out more writing less closely aligned with my experiences.
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michela
5.0 out of 5 stars splendido
Reviewed in Italy on July 12, 2013
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the group narra le avventure di un gruppo di amiche a new york negli anni 30. è un libro pieno di intelligenza, ironia, profondità, disincanto; attualissimo anche se scritto ormai cinquanta anni fa. la versione originale e mille volte più sofisticata di sex and the city... consigliatissimo.
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