Bibliofemme Bookclub An Irish Bookclub

McCarthy’s novel focuses on the lives of eight young women after they graduate from New York’s Vassar College in 1933. By following the different choices they make right up to 1940 McCarthy mirrors changes in America, both political and social. In charting the girls’ individual development, she invokes debate about sex, contraception, children, careers, housework, marriage, loneliness, lesbianism, adultery… sounds like one of our bookclub nights

The characters contain elements of McCarthy’s own personality but are also thinly disguised portraits of her own ‘group’ at Vassar, with whom she never felt she really fit in: the digs at their small-minded attitudes and wealthy upbringings are also thinly disguised. Controversial and groundbreaking when first released, it’s not the same shocker today, but Helena, Pokey, Dottie, Kay, Libby, Polly, Priss and Lakey (!) can be seen as the ancestors of Western civilisation’s “modern woman”. Not exactly one of my ‘favourite’ books, but definitely a bookclub recommendation.

This book bookmarked by The Writer