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.)