Maqbool Aziz

Sanity in our time

On the Contrary, Articles of Belief, 1946-1961

By

Weidenfeld and Nicolson £8.50 order from our bookshop

For many readers in Britain as well as in the United States, Mary McCarthy still remains the author only of The Group that fine comedy of ‘coming of age’ which created a literary sensation when it first appeared in 1963. The cause of the sensation was, of course, the ‘sex bit’. Here was a story of eight quite decent American young ladies that contained not only some frank sex talk, but proceeded to show the same young ladies wanting to go – and often succeeding – beyond mere talk. Needless to say, the novel went into three printings within the year. It ought to have gone into four – but not for that reason. Rather because the book was, and still is, among the more finely modulated of Miss McCarthy’s several satiric observations of certain aspects of American life and manners.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Full of invention which, at its most pedestrian, is eminently Victorian, and at its most unrestrained wildly imagi… ,
    • 'What in other hands could have been a dry, pedantic account of Christianity’s birth and evolution becomes in Holla… ,
    • RT : One of my favourite literary magazines is celebrating 40 years this year. Here is the September edition of… ,
    • 'Now that the Thames is too fast-flowing to freeze, its spirit’s devotees ... have found other climes for their pri… ,
    • 'Bythell glowers past his till at a world in slow free fall.' on the travails of a second-hand book… ,
    • 'It is a scent of animal wrath, of instinctive need, of brutal life which affects the cultured nostrils of our civi… ,
    • 'The day produced countless stories of chance, of people taking one route or another without realising that the dec… ,
    Follow Us