Excellent read and reflective. Certainly progressive for the period it was published. Funny how the issues these women face are still relevant today.

The Group tends to be at it's best during the brief stretches of sardonic, and occasionally snappy, dialog. They're carried off with the same disaffected knowing-ness that permeates the whole book, yet are more alive and engaging than the rest of the writing. A couple parts drag, such as the self-anguishing sections devoted to Priss and Polly (one of which concludes: "...they were all talking about her nursing and pretending that it was exciting, when it was not...". Amen after 30 pages devoted to just that topic.)

Gentle, mocking superiority peppered with cynicism. Semi-epic in length. It's solid candidate (proto) post-ironic material. Except for the upbeat corner it turns at the end.

There is plenty to be said about the context and social commentary within the novel, but I'll leave that for others.

Lastly, it's aged well. First published in the 50's, the writing still has a crisp, direct and modern feel.

I didn't expect this to be a breed of "life is obscenely full of itself and then you die", but I've had wildly incorrect presumptions about works before. Granted, I've never watched 'Sex and the City', so I never underwent what is likely one of the more accurate litmus tests for whether this was my kind of book or not, but Book Riot's 100 Women's Classics combined with other unread (for who knows how much longer now) on my shelves combined with a vague hope of something useful started me off, and now that I've finished, I'm rather sick of it all. None of the characters appealed, most of the events were horrid in a cheap sort of way despite the emphasis on Rich People Things™, the inevitable hoard of those screaming "SATIRE" at me doesn't justify the effort it would take me to take that claim seriously, and I found the behavior of most of the characters in the final scenes repulsive in how willingly they were able to form the titular group once one of them was dead, in contrast to the turgid isolation each had willingly bound themselves to previously. It all seemed so careless, to be perfectly honest, and the fact that so many of them were bigoted little brats when the almost all of them would've starved on the streets without their precious little trust founds took the cake. I give two stars to realistic to the point of banality views of a US world on the cusp of WWII, but hindsight is a bitch, and after reading this, I really understand where the phrase "eat the rich" came from.

As a social document, this has some worth in terms of observing the behavior and norms of a very specific, very elevated, very unfit group of people who largely watched the Great Depression and incoming fascism as highlights of articles in the likes of CNBC or Fox News, depending on their political predilection. As a work of literature, it had a lot to say about a very blinkered set that wouldn't even put their obscene privileges of whiteness and straightness and classness to narratively interesting use. If anything, it showed me that the boring daytime soap opera/comedy shit that plagues both live action and animated shows television today has had a very long history of pretending 95% of the world doesn't exist, and a sprinkling of classical lit is expected to go a long way in convincing one to pay attention to a bunch of hapless no nothings whose preconceptions of love and life and non white people are barely jostled, and save for a touch of tragedy porn near the very end, none of them reap the rewards for such weak willed obtuseness. Elinor, alias Lakey,

Spoiler

alias the Lesbian,

was the most interesting one out of all of them, and of course she is the one anyone barely gets to see. Lots of name drops, lots of petty domestic infighting, very little meat or wit. All in all, informative, but what a slog for the most part.

I'm obviously not the target audience for this book. It holds value for me as an artifact that some would lazily characterize as "hasn't aged well", but all that phrase really denotes is how much the speaker buys into the artificial narrative of progress built up by brutality and brainwashing. In terms of whether this is a classic, I say thee nay. It subsists on a substrate the world would be better off not keeping around, and has little to offer that makes up for such. In any case, I'm glad it's over. I'm in the mood to move back a millennium or so and see how "well" those times have aged.

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.

This was wild. It's like this fascinating glimpse into a time capsule. Her writing style is kind of odd but in a great way. I loved the characters (well, not most of the male ones) and there were some truly unforgettable scenes. I'm so glad I got to read this.

I solidly liked this book. The stories of the eight Vassar graduates were engaging and I truly cared about them, in spite of their many flaws. The transitions from one character's perspective to another's were expertly handled, and I thought the book explored the insider/outsider dynamic really well, juxtaposing Norine's story with that of "the group" and, in the end, Lakey's story with everyone else. The book feels very 'of it's moment,' and feminist in a way that isn't overt, which for me, is both good and bad. Reading this, I found myself being extremely thankful I was born when I was, and I feel like I have a greater appreciation for what the women of that generation endured. It was weak on plot, and I would have liked to read more about Lakey's expatriate experiences, but overall I enjoyed The Group and would definitely recommend it.

I liked this, I think? A solid three stars at least? Maybe more?

This was very long and quite slow and sprawling, and most of what I found remarkable (meaning “worth marking” rather than “striking” or “extraordinary”) was specifically how the varied portraits of 1930s East Coast upper-class, educated womanhood were written about from the perspective of the early 1960s. The cultural critiques were interesting, often biting, and frequently sad, and they were alternately dated and extremely relevant. And yet, the farther I went along, the more it felt as if as the author were serving up these women on a sort of reverse assembly line, on which the subjects are not built into something greater than their parts but instead deconstructed and dissected. There was some great commentary here about class, religion, race, the sexes, sexuality, motherhood, infertility, mental health, domestic violence, infidelity, family drama...you name it. By the end, though, the overwhelming attitude I felt coming from the author was contempt. In some cases she outright disapproved of the women’s choices, and other times she left some room for pity, but overall I couldn’t shake the feeling that McCarthy *hated* these women, with the exception of the one who floated above it all by grace of her specific lifestyle (and even the fact of her being “above it all” was tinged with some degree of disapproval).

That said, these women felt real, and they felt to me like products (aha!) of their time in a way that it was interesting to have revealed in this sort of borderline trashy way. I wish I’d read a bit about McCarthy’s own life before starting this, so that’s my recommendation here if you want to dive in. If you like soap operas and poorly behaved society people and a hearty combination of mean girls and pearl clutchers and mommy shamers, this could be the book you’ve been waiting for.

Okay, yes, I guess I did like this after all.

UPDATE: Oh. Oh! The movie is so fitting. (Long, slow, and confusing, but weirdly satisfying.)