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The Group
Lara Feigel's first novel, The Group, is a fiercely intelligent, revealing novel about a group of female friends turning forty. Who has children and who doesn't? Whose marriages are working, whose aren't, and who has embarked on completely different models of sexuality and relationships? Who has managed to fulfil their promise, whose life has foundered and what do they think about it, either way?
The Group takes its cue from Mary McCarthy's frank, absorbing novel about a group of female graduates. The relations between men and women may be different now but, in the age of Me Too, they're equally fraught. This is an engrossing portrait of contemporary female life and friendship, and a thrillingly intimate and acute take on female character in an age that may or may not have been changed by feminism in its different strands.
'A very funny and brilliant book. Feigel does a thorough and virtuosic job of describing the dilemmas of contemporary middle-class women' Rachel Cusk
The Group takes its cue from Mary McCarthy's frank, absorbing novel about a group of female graduates. The relations between men and women may be different now but, in the age of Me Too, they're equally fraught. This is an engrossing portrait of contemporary female life and friendship, and a thrillingly intimate and acute take on female character in an age that may or may not have been changed by feminism in its different strands.
'A very funny and brilliant book. Feigel does a thorough and virtuosic job of describing the dilemmas of contemporary middle-class women' Rachel Cusk
336 pages, Hardcover
First published June 11, 2020
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311 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
November 9, 2020
Synopsis
Five women meet at University and thus begins a lifelong friendship. The journey through early adulthood, takes in married life and children; the journey brings divorce, and for some the absence of children and married life. By the conclusion of the book it seems doubtful that the friendships were ever truly close ones.
Instead it’s a book with a series of virtually identical ruminations on the meaning of life “We had another version of the same conversation we always have, about whether we have chosen our lives” (288). Yawn.
The five protagonists are Stella (both participant and third party observer/narrator), a publishing director; housewife Priss; Helena: a television presenter; Polly: a Gynaecologist at St Thomas’s Hospital, London
and Kay a teacher. Various young children flit into and out of the story and for the most part these little darlings are indistinguishable from each other.
The male representatives are Harald, a chauvinist dinosaur; Vince, the probable groper and sexual harasser; Ben, Hugh, and Tom. This latter three are as interchangeable as the featured children in the book.
The battle of the sexes is clumsily expressed
“I often feel at the moment that all women are oppressed by all men” (163)
“the ease of bonding by laughing about the inadequacies of men“ (292)
This book is a close retelling of a 1960’s feminist classic (the Group by Mary McCarthy) and this group of entitled women (the same names are retained) manufactur problems and issues to keep themselves occupied.
Lowlights
• Sex as a remedy for domestic discord; easy and immediate orgasmic sexual gratification despite a total lack of love and respect between the couplings. Unconvinced.
Stella is the primary agent for shock horror expressions of female emancipation “I fantasised about sex with most of the men I met” (73)
• To reinforce the modern retelling, Feigel shoehorns a number of obvious 21st century iconic brands into the story. Pret –a-Manger is referenced several times. So is café Nero and Bill’s. Love Island gets a reference, so does Brexit. Its all so obvious and unsubtle.
Social media and television is stressed, including an awful and contrived example of the power of television imagery:
“ I can’t separate hysterical terror at the fragility of my own two from compassion for the plight of children in America” (152)
• There’s also some straightforward clumsy writing.
On meeting her sister’s boyfriend, Polly opines:
“there’s something pleasantly meaty about his torso...she can imagine the flesh on the two sides of his chest as supple chunks of steak” (296)
Historical & Literary
Lara Feigel has produced a 2020 version of the 1963 book of the same name. London substitutes for New York, but for the most part (including the names of the lead characters) it’s designed to be a straight retelling of the original book, with a contemporary feel.
Questions
It was interesting that a recurring theme/observation through the book was that of the threat to the written word, and novel. One example: “there is a desperation in these conversations given that we all suspect that literature will have ceased to have much status within a decade of two“ (38). Why does Fiegel, through her characters, have such fears at a time when book reading is undergoing a renaissance these days?
Author background & Reviews
Lara Feigel is not an author easily pigeon holed.
She is Professor of Modern Literature and Culture at Kings College, London University.
Her work includesThe Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love and Art in the Ruins of the Reich. Free Woman: Life, Liberation and Doris Lessing.
Consequently I was expecting something significantly deeper and more original than Feigel’s contemporary version of The Group
Recommend
I note from the reviews on Goodreads that The Group has been picked up by women. There are virtually no male readers whatsoever. As a reader who divides his reading equally between female and male authors I was very disappointed in the book.
Read the Mary McCarthy original.
Five women meet at University and thus begins a lifelong friendship. The journey through early adulthood, takes in married life and children; the journey brings divorce, and for some the absence of children and married life. By the conclusion of the book it seems doubtful that the friendships were ever truly close ones.
Instead it’s a book with a series of virtually identical ruminations on the meaning of life “We had another version of the same conversation we always have, about whether we have chosen our lives” (288). Yawn.
The five protagonists are Stella (both participant and third party observer/narrator), a publishing director; housewife Priss; Helena: a television presenter; Polly: a Gynaecologist at St Thomas’s Hospital, London
and Kay a teacher. Various young children flit into and out of the story and for the most part these little darlings are indistinguishable from each other.
The male representatives are Harald, a chauvinist dinosaur; Vince, the probable groper and sexual harasser; Ben, Hugh, and Tom. This latter three are as interchangeable as the featured children in the book.
The battle of the sexes is clumsily expressed
“I often feel at the moment that all women are oppressed by all men” (163)
“the ease of bonding by laughing about the inadequacies of men“ (292)
This book is a close retelling of a 1960’s feminist classic (the Group by Mary McCarthy) and this group of entitled women (the same names are retained) manufactur problems and issues to keep themselves occupied.
Lowlights
• Sex as a remedy for domestic discord; easy and immediate orgasmic sexual gratification despite a total lack of love and respect between the couplings. Unconvinced.
Stella is the primary agent for shock horror expressions of female emancipation “I fantasised about sex with most of the men I met” (73)
• To reinforce the modern retelling, Feigel shoehorns a number of obvious 21st century iconic brands into the story. Pret –a-Manger is referenced several times. So is café Nero and Bill’s. Love Island gets a reference, so does Brexit. Its all so obvious and unsubtle.
Social media and television is stressed, including an awful and contrived example of the power of television imagery:
“ I can’t separate hysterical terror at the fragility of my own two from compassion for the plight of children in America” (152)
• There’s also some straightforward clumsy writing.
On meeting her sister’s boyfriend, Polly opines:
“there’s something pleasantly meaty about his torso...she can imagine the flesh on the two sides of his chest as supple chunks of steak” (296)
Historical & Literary
Lara Feigel has produced a 2020 version of the 1963 book of the same name. London substitutes for New York, but for the most part (including the names of the lead characters) it’s designed to be a straight retelling of the original book, with a contemporary feel.
Questions
It was interesting that a recurring theme/observation through the book was that of the threat to the written word, and novel. One example: “there is a desperation in these conversations given that we all suspect that literature will have ceased to have much status within a decade of two“ (38). Why does Fiegel, through her characters, have such fears at a time when book reading is undergoing a renaissance these days?
Author background & Reviews
Lara Feigel is not an author easily pigeon holed.
She is Professor of Modern Literature and Culture at Kings College, London University.
Her work includesThe Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love and Art in the Ruins of the Reich. Free Woman: Life, Liberation and Doris Lessing.
Consequently I was expecting something significantly deeper and more original than Feigel’s contemporary version of The Group
Recommend
I note from the reviews on Goodreads that The Group has been picked up by women. There are virtually no male readers whatsoever. As a reader who divides his reading equally between female and male authors I was very disappointed in the book.
Read the Mary McCarthy original.
May 20, 2020
Lara Feigel is the author of non-fiction books, which I have really loved, including, “The Love Charm of Bombs,” and “The Bitter Taste of Victory,” so I was excited to read her first novel. Apparently, this is inspired by an American novel of the same name, published by Mary McCarthy in 1963.
Feigel uses a group of women who were at University together and are middle-class, around forty years of age, when we meet them, and still in contact. The main character is Stella, whose marriage has broken down. Like many of the other characters, she is involved in publishing. Her friends, from the group, are Priss, Helena, Polly and Kay.
These are characters that I could feel affinity with, even if I am now a little older than this group of women. However, the author cleverly weaves in the issues that face women of that age, and class. The women, the youngest of whom is 38 and the oldest 40, either have young children, or are debating whether to do so before time runs out. Having had my last child – and only daughter – at the age of forty, I could sympathise with that, ‘is it too late,’ feeling of time running out.
There is also the issue of careers, of feeling hemmed in by the demands of young children, of taking lovers, of marriages breaking down, marital affairs, secrets and desires. Admittedly, this is probably aimed at middle aged women in London, but then I am then, the perfect target audience. I really enjoyed it. Not my usual type of read, but fun and gossipy and enjoyable. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.
Feigel uses a group of women who were at University together and are middle-class, around forty years of age, when we meet them, and still in contact. The main character is Stella, whose marriage has broken down. Like many of the other characters, she is involved in publishing. Her friends, from the group, are Priss, Helena, Polly and Kay.
These are characters that I could feel affinity with, even if I am now a little older than this group of women. However, the author cleverly weaves in the issues that face women of that age, and class. The women, the youngest of whom is 38 and the oldest 40, either have young children, or are debating whether to do so before time runs out. Having had my last child – and only daughter – at the age of forty, I could sympathise with that, ‘is it too late,’ feeling of time running out.
There is also the issue of careers, of feeling hemmed in by the demands of young children, of taking lovers, of marriages breaking down, marital affairs, secrets and desires. Admittedly, this is probably aimed at middle aged women in London, but then I am then, the perfect target audience. I really enjoyed it. Not my usual type of read, but fun and gossipy and enjoyable. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.
December 1, 2021
I'm always intrigued by modern adaptations of 'classic' works (c.f., the current Hogarth Shakespeare series), so was somewhat fascinated that anyone would even attempt a modern retelling of Mary McCarthy's 1963 not-quite-classic novel. I read that one immediately prior to tackling this one, which proved indispensable, since otherwise I would have been totally lost -- and even more bored than I was. Connecting the dots is practically the only thing that kept me semi-interested.
The disappointing element is that, other than copying some of the character's names, professions and foibles, there isn't a lot of overlap. Feigel sets her story in contemporary London (vs. 1930's NY), her characters are all approaching 40 (rather than the mid-20's-early-30's of the earlier book) ... and she cuts the characters down to 5 from the original's 8 - although Pokey and Lakey were somewhat superfluous anyway, and the narrator here is named Stella, but is really kind of an amalgamation of Libby and Dottie.
The problem with the book, other than the fact the prose is rather pedestrian; and that the flip-flopping between Stella's POV and an omniscient 3rd person (often within the same paragraph) drove me nuts; is that the storylines are all so humdrum and predictable. Perhaps the gender gap makes this just not terribly interesting for a male reader, but I would be surprised to find any female one deeply enthralled either. Stick with the original - which surprisingly DOES hold up rather well.
The disappointing element is that, other than copying some of the character's names, professions and foibles, there isn't a lot of overlap. Feigel sets her story in contemporary London (vs. 1930's NY), her characters are all approaching 40 (rather than the mid-20's-early-30's of the earlier book) ... and she cuts the characters down to 5 from the original's 8 - although Pokey and Lakey were somewhat superfluous anyway, and the narrator here is named Stella, but is really kind of an amalgamation of Libby and Dottie.
The problem with the book, other than the fact the prose is rather pedestrian; and that the flip-flopping between Stella's POV and an omniscient 3rd person (often within the same paragraph) drove me nuts; is that the storylines are all so humdrum and predictable. Perhaps the gender gap makes this just not terribly interesting for a male reader, but I would be surprised to find any female one deeply enthralled either. Stick with the original - which surprisingly DOES hold up rather well.
July 13, 2020
(4.5) Lara Feigel’s memoir Free Woman was one of my favourite books of 2018. In it she interrogates conventions of marriage and motherhood while rereading the works of Doris Lessing – The Golden Notebook (1962), in particular, dramatizes women’s struggles to combine their disparate roles into a harmonious identity. Drawing inspiration from Lessing as well as from another early feminist novel, The Group by Mary McCarthy*, Feigel’s debut novel crafts a kaleidoscopic portrait of five women’s lives in 2018.
Stella, Kay, Helena, Polly and Priss met at a picnic while studying at Oxbridge and decided to rent a house together. Now 40-ish, they live in London and remain close, though their lives have branched in slightly different directions. Kay is an English teacher but has always wanted to be a novelist like her American husband, Harald. Priss is a stay-at-home mother excited to be opening a café. Polly, a gynaecological consultant at St Thomas’s Hospital, is having an affair with a married colleague. Helena, a single documentary presenter, decides she wants to have a baby and pursues insemination via a gay friend.
Narrating her friends’ lives as well as her own is Stella, an editor at a Faber-like publishing house whose director (also Helena’s uncle) is under investigation for sexual misconduct. Stella, a stand-in for the author, has split from her husband and has a new baby via IVF as well as an older child; this hint of autofiction lends the book an intimacy it might have lacked with an omniscient perspective. Although you have to suspend disbelief in a few places – could Stella really know so many details of her friends’ lives? – it feels apt that she can only understand these other women in relation to herself. Her voice can be catty, but is always candid, and Feigel is astute on the performative aspects of femininity.
Fast-forward a Sally Rooney novel by about 20 years and you’ll have an idea of what to expect here. It is a sexually frank and socially engaged narrative that arose from the context of the #MeToo movement and fully acknowledges the privilege and limitations of its setting. The characters express guilt over lamenting middle-class problems while there is such suffering in the wider world – we glimpse this in Polly’s work with African girls who have undergone genital mutilation. The diversity is limited to Black boyfriends, Helena’s bisexuality, and the fact that one group member decides not to have children (that 1 in 5 is statistically accurate).
The advantage of the apparent heterogeneity in the friend group, though, is that it highlights depths of personality and subtleties of experience. Stella even sees herself as an amateur anthropologist:
Feigel previously wrote two group biographies of cultural figures of the Second World War era, and she applies that precise skill set – capturing the atmosphere of a time period; noting similarities but also clear distinctions between people – to great effect here. You’ll recognize aspects of yourself in all of the characters, and be reminded of how grateful you are for (or how much you wish you had) friends whom you know will always be there for you. It’s an absorbing and relevant novel that ranks among my few favourites of the year so far.
*Feigel borrows the names of four of her five group members, plus those of some secondary characters, from McCarthy, with Stella a new character perhaps inspired in part by McCarthy’s Libby, who wants to work with books but, after delivering an earnest report on a 500-page pot-boiler, hears that “we really have no work that you’re uniquely qualified to do. You’re one of thousands of English majors who come pouring out of the colleges every June, stage-struck to go into publishing.” (That sure sounds familiar!) Narrowing the circle and introducing a first-person narrator were wise choices that made Feigel’s version more accessible. Both, though, are characterized by forthright commentary and a shrewd understanding of human motivations.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Stella, Kay, Helena, Polly and Priss met at a picnic while studying at Oxbridge and decided to rent a house together. Now 40-ish, they live in London and remain close, though their lives have branched in slightly different directions. Kay is an English teacher but has always wanted to be a novelist like her American husband, Harald. Priss is a stay-at-home mother excited to be opening a café. Polly, a gynaecological consultant at St Thomas’s Hospital, is having an affair with a married colleague. Helena, a single documentary presenter, decides she wants to have a baby and pursues insemination via a gay friend.
Narrating her friends’ lives as well as her own is Stella, an editor at a Faber-like publishing house whose director (also Helena’s uncle) is under investigation for sexual misconduct. Stella, a stand-in for the author, has split from her husband and has a new baby via IVF as well as an older child; this hint of autofiction lends the book an intimacy it might have lacked with an omniscient perspective. Although you have to suspend disbelief in a few places – could Stella really know so many details of her friends’ lives? – it feels apt that she can only understand these other women in relation to herself. Her voice can be catty, but is always candid, and Feigel is astute on the performative aspects of femininity.
Fast-forward a Sally Rooney novel by about 20 years and you’ll have an idea of what to expect here. It is a sexually frank and socially engaged narrative that arose from the context of the #MeToo movement and fully acknowledges the privilege and limitations of its setting. The characters express guilt over lamenting middle-class problems while there is such suffering in the wider world – we glimpse this in Polly’s work with African girls who have undergone genital mutilation. The diversity is limited to Black boyfriends, Helena’s bisexuality, and the fact that one group member decides not to have children (that 1 in 5 is statistically accurate).
The advantage of the apparent heterogeneity in the friend group, though, is that it highlights depths of personality and subtleties of experience. Stella even sees herself as an amateur anthropologist:
So here we are then. Five exact contemporaries who once shared a cluttered, thin-walled student house off the Cowley Road, all privileged, white, middle-class, all vestigial hangers-on, left over from an era when we received free educations at our elite university and then emerged into a world where we could still just about find jobs and buy flats, provided with opportunities for selfishness and leisure by our cleaners and our childminders. Nothing very eventful happens to us, but that gives more room for the ethnographer in me to get to work.
Feigel previously wrote two group biographies of cultural figures of the Second World War era, and she applies that precise skill set – capturing the atmosphere of a time period; noting similarities but also clear distinctions between people – to great effect here. You’ll recognize aspects of yourself in all of the characters, and be reminded of how grateful you are for (or how much you wish you had) friends whom you know will always be there for you. It’s an absorbing and relevant novel that ranks among my few favourites of the year so far.
*Feigel borrows the names of four of her five group members, plus those of some secondary characters, from McCarthy, with Stella a new character perhaps inspired in part by McCarthy’s Libby, who wants to work with books but, after delivering an earnest report on a 500-page pot-boiler, hears that “we really have no work that you’re uniquely qualified to do. You’re one of thousands of English majors who come pouring out of the colleges every June, stage-struck to go into publishing.” (That sure sounds familiar!) Narrowing the circle and introducing a first-person narrator were wise choices that made Feigel’s version more accessible. Both, though, are characterized by forthright commentary and a shrewd understanding of human motivations.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
June 14, 2020
It’s always interesting to discover new authors and this debut caught my attention with a premise that sounded appealing and promising. Following the lives of five middle class women approaching their forties, this is an intelligent exploration of their friendships within the group, the dynamics of the group and how they are affected by their sexual relationships with either husbands, partners or lovers, their careers and motherhood.
If I’m totally honest I struggled with the writing style, switching between the five women, Stella, Helena, Priss, Polly and Kay but it came across as if it’s just Stella narrating which I didn’t like. To me it felt very cold and clinical, almost devoid of any emotion and I think I would apply that observation to both the writing style and the characters. What a bunch of unlikeable women they are!! I couldn’t understand why they were still trying to keep these friendships alive since they all seem to have issues with one another making ‘the group’ pointless and unsustainable. Why not move on? Having an affair with one of the group’s husbands with apparently no guilt I found quite shocking although another individual in the group conducting a relationship with a married work colleague I found less eyebrow raising.
Sex is the overriding theme of this novel and the male contingent are equally deplorable characters with questionable moral standards. I think the language of sex and sexual relationships is so different today with younger generations viewing this whole subject from a more serious and enlightened perspective which I think these women are grappling with. There are serious questions raised about the subject of monogamy and whether any of us can really expect a lifetime of fidelity. The strand in this novel featuring Vince, a man accused of inappropriate behaviour towards a number of women is in recognition of the #metoo movement which of course is another important subject to explore and if nothing else, this is all thought provoking matter. Unfortunately for me these women who seem to be suffering all kinds of personal crises are portrayed as incredibly self indulgent, introspective and narcissistic individuals. I felt burdened by the weight of their problems which in turn induced an apathy within me towards events that were happening in their lives and overall found the whole tone of the novel gloomy, depressing and dispassionate.
Perhaps my least favourite character is Kay who abandons her young children in search of solitude and reappraisal. Quoting this line sums up her character perfectly and perhaps is a reflection on how some women feel??
“The only way I can return to my life is if I accept we’re all terrible people most of the time. Cruel and selfish. All of us, our husbands, our children.” I do sympathise with her to a certain extent in terms of “the endlessness of everyone depending on you to be responsible.” That probably strikes a chord with most women and certainly considering Kay’s own circumstances married to Harald I could understand her need to escape and re-evaluate. “Why would anyone choose a life with too much in it instead of a life where we can do nothing?” is yet another quote from Kay, lamenting her current situation and can be read as either terribly introspective and selfish or a statement that is brave and honest.
On some level I could appreciate all that was being said here and I wanted to be able at some point to say I was enjoying the reading experience which is why I continued to persevere. Sometimes even if you don’t warm to or like the characters, they still have an important message to convey. Is this the case with The Group? I honestly don’t know what to think because there came a point at which I’d almost switched off, knowing that on this occasion unfortunately this book simply wasn’t to my taste. I totally agree it is an intelligent piece of writing but I don’t think it’s funny as some reviewers have said. I’ve grappled with the underlying messages and accepted that perhaps my decision to discover another new author just didn’t pay off this time. I wish the author all the best with her debut and as always my thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read. I’ve awarded this 2.5 stars.
If I’m totally honest I struggled with the writing style, switching between the five women, Stella, Helena, Priss, Polly and Kay but it came across as if it’s just Stella narrating which I didn’t like. To me it felt very cold and clinical, almost devoid of any emotion and I think I would apply that observation to both the writing style and the characters. What a bunch of unlikeable women they are!! I couldn’t understand why they were still trying to keep these friendships alive since they all seem to have issues with one another making ‘the group’ pointless and unsustainable. Why not move on? Having an affair with one of the group’s husbands with apparently no guilt I found quite shocking although another individual in the group conducting a relationship with a married work colleague I found less eyebrow raising.
Sex is the overriding theme of this novel and the male contingent are equally deplorable characters with questionable moral standards. I think the language of sex and sexual relationships is so different today with younger generations viewing this whole subject from a more serious and enlightened perspective which I think these women are grappling with. There are serious questions raised about the subject of monogamy and whether any of us can really expect a lifetime of fidelity. The strand in this novel featuring Vince, a man accused of inappropriate behaviour towards a number of women is in recognition of the #metoo movement which of course is another important subject to explore and if nothing else, this is all thought provoking matter. Unfortunately for me these women who seem to be suffering all kinds of personal crises are portrayed as incredibly self indulgent, introspective and narcissistic individuals. I felt burdened by the weight of their problems which in turn induced an apathy within me towards events that were happening in their lives and overall found the whole tone of the novel gloomy, depressing and dispassionate.
Perhaps my least favourite character is Kay who abandons her young children in search of solitude and reappraisal. Quoting this line sums up her character perfectly and perhaps is a reflection on how some women feel??
“The only way I can return to my life is if I accept we’re all terrible people most of the time. Cruel and selfish. All of us, our husbands, our children.” I do sympathise with her to a certain extent in terms of “the endlessness of everyone depending on you to be responsible.” That probably strikes a chord with most women and certainly considering Kay’s own circumstances married to Harald I could understand her need to escape and re-evaluate. “Why would anyone choose a life with too much in it instead of a life where we can do nothing?” is yet another quote from Kay, lamenting her current situation and can be read as either terribly introspective and selfish or a statement that is brave and honest.
On some level I could appreciate all that was being said here and I wanted to be able at some point to say I was enjoying the reading experience which is why I continued to persevere. Sometimes even if you don’t warm to or like the characters, they still have an important message to convey. Is this the case with The Group? I honestly don’t know what to think because there came a point at which I’d almost switched off, knowing that on this occasion unfortunately this book simply wasn’t to my taste. I totally agree it is an intelligent piece of writing but I don’t think it’s funny as some reviewers have said. I’ve grappled with the underlying messages and accepted that perhaps my decision to discover another new author just didn’t pay off this time. I wish the author all the best with her debut and as always my thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read. I’ve awarded this 2.5 stars.
June 23, 2020
I feel absolutely terrible rating this book with 2 ⭐⭐ but I seriously lost the will. I wanted to enjoy it so much as the premise sounds great but it just went nowhere. The book was narrated by Stella, one of the ladies in the group, who is going through a divorce and raising two young children. While I usually love multiple POV, I found this book hard to connect with because the chapters about Stella's friends were not narrated by her friends but by her and thus they felt very cold and detached.
The only part I did enjoy was the discussions centering around the harassment cases because Fiegal touched on the idea that not all accusations are honest and true. While I understand and support the Me Too movement, we know that there are a minority of women who do lie and I think it was bold and brave of Fiegal to explore this.
Initially I was excited as I felt the book would cover the complexities of female friendship, the dynamics within the group, how you are close to different women within your group at different times etc and while all all these things were covered, I don't think they were covered well. There was a plot twist which could have been huge but it wasn't really explored much at all. I started to think about how the characters developed but I don't think they did develop that much at all. I wanted to DNF it on a number of occasions but couldn't bring myself to do it as I just have this obsession with seeing books through till the end in the hope that it will come together for me.
As I write this review I am wondering three things:
1) Was Stella's narration cold and detached on purpose? Was that supposed to be a reflection on how these women feel about life and perhaps each other?
2) Did their characters not develop on purpose? Was the point of that to show that people don't really change?
3) Have I missed the point of this book entirely?
Thank you @netgalley for this arc.
The only part I did enjoy was the discussions centering around the harassment cases because Fiegal touched on the idea that not all accusations are honest and true. While I understand and support the Me Too movement, we know that there are a minority of women who do lie and I think it was bold and brave of Fiegal to explore this.
Initially I was excited as I felt the book would cover the complexities of female friendship, the dynamics within the group, how you are close to different women within your group at different times etc and while all all these things were covered, I don't think they were covered well. There was a plot twist which could have been huge but it wasn't really explored much at all. I started to think about how the characters developed but I don't think they did develop that much at all. I wanted to DNF it on a number of occasions but couldn't bring myself to do it as I just have this obsession with seeing books through till the end in the hope that it will come together for me.
As I write this review I am wondering three things:
1) Was Stella's narration cold and detached on purpose? Was that supposed to be a reflection on how these women feel about life and perhaps each other?
2) Did their characters not develop on purpose? Was the point of that to show that people don't really change?
3) Have I missed the point of this book entirely?
Thank you @netgalley for this arc.
June 27, 2020
The synopsis of this book suggested that this was a book for me, for my time of life, for women like me. How wrong could I have been? I couldn't relate to the characters, no matter how hard I tried.
I found the style rather vacuous and there was no connection to the characters. The book seemed to concentrate on that which, to me seemed unimportant and unlikely - is everyone really having affairs? - yet leaving untouched some of the more important current matters, such as women's rights, #metoo and the like.
I've more than a little in common with those experiencing issues around motherhood and fertility, but even here I found the words lacking in emotion and depth. There was so much that could have been said and done, but perhaps an idea ran away with the author and morphed into something unintended. I ended the book feeling that the author really didn't understand the characters and, as a result, nor did I.
Not one for me, I'm afraid.
With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.
I found the style rather vacuous and there was no connection to the characters. The book seemed to concentrate on that which, to me seemed unimportant and unlikely - is everyone really having affairs? - yet leaving untouched some of the more important current matters, such as women's rights, #metoo and the like.
I've more than a little in common with those experiencing issues around motherhood and fertility, but even here I found the words lacking in emotion and depth. There was so much that could have been said and done, but perhaps an idea ran away with the author and morphed into something unintended. I ended the book feeling that the author really didn't understand the characters and, as a result, nor did I.
Not one for me, I'm afraid.
With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.
May 13, 2020
⭐1 Star⭐
This book details a year in the life of five women turning forty. And it felt like it took forty years to read. Although the book markets itself as fiercely intelligent, It doesn't reveal anything I don't already know, sexism exists, some women fight against it, others perpetuate it. This is a novel about the problems of middle-class white women and although I can be engaged by a book about anyone I didn't find this one particularly compelling.
A summary of my thoughts before I DNFed at 60%.
As a lesbian, the talk of lesbians was literally the worst thing I have read in a long time. It seems 2020 is bring out a new wave of debut authors that are more concerned about their diversity quota than representing their queer characters realistically. This is my review and my opinion but when I have spoken to other reviewers on the LGBT+ spectrum it seems most of us came to the resounding conclusion that this is not how we prefer to be represented. It felt as if it was written for men and straight women with scenes that are at once both fetishising and stereotypical. This coming from a bisexual main character who attempts to stereotype herself more than once was equally as infuriating. Discussions of sexuality lacked any nuance and although it began conversations about lesser talked about topics (the desire to be a mother while identifying as an wlw) I felt like they weren’t given the development they needed to be successful.
The novel downplays all mentions of sexual assault. And although the blurb mentions the #MeToo movement this book added nothing new to the conversation, it felt reactionary in the worst way.
Overall, it illuminates nothing about white middle-class society that I don't already know and you cannot get from reading other novels like Big Little Lies which discuss the flaws of this societal cast with more finesse. For a novel said to provoke empathy, I found myself pitying the characters and their endlessly dull lives rather than feeling any compassion for them. For a book like this to be successful, I think it would have to do a better job at evoking this sympathy.
Trigger Warnings: Abortions, Sexism, Abuse.
(DNF after three months of trying)
This book details a year in the life of five women turning forty. And it felt like it took forty years to read. Although the book markets itself as fiercely intelligent, It doesn't reveal anything I don't already know, sexism exists, some women fight against it, others perpetuate it. This is a novel about the problems of middle-class white women and although I can be engaged by a book about anyone I didn't find this one particularly compelling.
A summary of my thoughts before I DNFed at 60%.
As a lesbian, the talk of lesbians was literally the worst thing I have read in a long time. It seems 2020 is bring out a new wave of debut authors that are more concerned about their diversity quota than representing their queer characters realistically. This is my review and my opinion but when I have spoken to other reviewers on the LGBT+ spectrum it seems most of us came to the resounding conclusion that this is not how we prefer to be represented. It felt as if it was written for men and straight women with scenes that are at once both fetishising and stereotypical. This coming from a bisexual main character who attempts to stereotype herself more than once was equally as infuriating. Discussions of sexuality lacked any nuance and although it began conversations about lesser talked about topics (the desire to be a mother while identifying as an wlw) I felt like they weren’t given the development they needed to be successful.
The novel downplays all mentions of sexual assault. And although the blurb mentions the #MeToo movement this book added nothing new to the conversation, it felt reactionary in the worst way.
Overall, it illuminates nothing about white middle-class society that I don't already know and you cannot get from reading other novels like Big Little Lies which discuss the flaws of this societal cast with more finesse. For a novel said to provoke empathy, I found myself pitying the characters and their endlessly dull lives rather than feeling any compassion for them. For a book like this to be successful, I think it would have to do a better job at evoking this sympathy.
Trigger Warnings: Abortions, Sexism, Abuse.
(DNF after three months of trying)
August 5, 2020
I am grateful to NetGalley and John Murray for an advance review copy, but I have to say that I found this to be a supremely irritating novel.
The narrator Stella is one of a group of nearly-40-year-old women who have been friends since university. The novel is structured in sections for each of them, all narrated by Stella, punctuated by sections in her own voice about her.
The style is flat, monotonous, a relentless stream of “she said x, then the other one said y, and I thought z”. There is more direct speech than I thought at first, but speech marks aren’t used much of the time, though they sometimes - why? - and the five women all sound the same as reported by Stella (who, ironically, is a successful writer), so that even halfway through the book I was still struggling to remember which was who amongst them.
I couldn’t work out what the book was actually about - friendship? Femalehood? Marriage? Motherhood? The three with children seem so traumatised and exhausted by the experience that you have to wonder why on earth, approaching their forties, they keep defining themselves in terms of their relationships and maternity and encouraging the two childless ones to have a baby. Especially irritating is the repeated reference to having children as ‘procreation’, which comes across as coy and po-faced.
They are a collective cliche: talented writer squandering her gift because her less talented husband got there before her, dissatisfied with her marriage, her children, her unfulfilled life. Bisexual documentary maker planning a baby with her gay male friend. Divorcee who got pregnant with her ex husband’s baby by IVF. Successful consultant with a guilty secret, having an affair with a colleague 25 years older. A pattern of older husbands. Much focus on the sacredness of their friendship dating back to university, but also a fair bit of malice in Stella’s portrayal of her friends.
All in all, this novel bored me and left a nasty taste in my mouth - I just could not identify or sympathise with a bunch of unpleasant, emotionally dithering women without the backbone to acknowledge the things that aren’t working in their lives and get on with fixing them or walking away. I’m afraid I didn’t bother finishing it.
The narrator Stella is one of a group of nearly-40-year-old women who have been friends since university. The novel is structured in sections for each of them, all narrated by Stella, punctuated by sections in her own voice about her.
The style is flat, monotonous, a relentless stream of “she said x, then the other one said y, and I thought z”. There is more direct speech than I thought at first, but speech marks aren’t used much of the time, though they sometimes - why? - and the five women all sound the same as reported by Stella (who, ironically, is a successful writer), so that even halfway through the book I was still struggling to remember which was who amongst them.
I couldn’t work out what the book was actually about - friendship? Femalehood? Marriage? Motherhood? The three with children seem so traumatised and exhausted by the experience that you have to wonder why on earth, approaching their forties, they keep defining themselves in terms of their relationships and maternity and encouraging the two childless ones to have a baby. Especially irritating is the repeated reference to having children as ‘procreation’, which comes across as coy and po-faced.
They are a collective cliche: talented writer squandering her gift because her less talented husband got there before her, dissatisfied with her marriage, her children, her unfulfilled life. Bisexual documentary maker planning a baby with her gay male friend. Divorcee who got pregnant with her ex husband’s baby by IVF. Successful consultant with a guilty secret, having an affair with a colleague 25 years older. A pattern of older husbands. Much focus on the sacredness of their friendship dating back to university, but also a fair bit of malice in Stella’s portrayal of her friends.
All in all, this novel bored me and left a nasty taste in my mouth - I just could not identify or sympathise with a bunch of unpleasant, emotionally dithering women without the backbone to acknowledge the things that aren’t working in their lives and get on with fixing them or walking away. I’m afraid I didn’t bother finishing it.
March 19, 2020
‘The Group’ by Lara Feigel is one of those novels that gives women a bad name. I appreciate that this is a pretty damning sweeping statement but it’s come from trawling through this story desperately hoping that at least some of her privileged five will become a little less self-centred and a little more outward looking.
Focusing on Stella, Kay, Polly, Priss and Helena, all of whom meet at university, the reader is presented with middle-class London lives in which all of them live in pleasant accommodation and enjoy interesting jobs – if they choose to! They angst about how difficult it is to look after their children, even though they have help or family close by. Or they choose to have children when they have been childless, or decide not to have children. Is Feigel giving us anything new? Or writing about everyday life in an engaging way? Or suggesting that we can learn something about our own lives from what her characters think, say and do? If she is, then this reader has massively failed to recognise these strengths!
Told in third person from recently divorced (and already partnered anew) Stella’s point of view, Feigel also uses the rather strange narrative device of Stella telling the others’ stories in third person too. Stella’s voice seems to fade almost immediately so that one wonders why the whole novel could not have been told in a more traditional third person narrative. This feels like a failed stylistic experiment.
I’m not a reader who has to ‘like’ characters before I can enjoy a novel. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have enjoyed classics like Graham Greene’s ‘Brighton Rock’ or the recent brilliantly written ‘Night Boat to Tangier’ by Kevin Barry. Feigel’s characters are certainly not likeable in the main: they are often self-absorbed, disloyal, and pretty dull but I can’t see what she is hoping to show her readers by presenting them as such. Is the patriarchy at fault? Not obviously – most of these women are using their men as much as the men use them.
Feigel can clearly write (hence 2 stars rather than 1) so this novel feels like a wasted opportunity, both for her and the reader!
Focusing on Stella, Kay, Polly, Priss and Helena, all of whom meet at university, the reader is presented with middle-class London lives in which all of them live in pleasant accommodation and enjoy interesting jobs – if they choose to! They angst about how difficult it is to look after their children, even though they have help or family close by. Or they choose to have children when they have been childless, or decide not to have children. Is Feigel giving us anything new? Or writing about everyday life in an engaging way? Or suggesting that we can learn something about our own lives from what her characters think, say and do? If she is, then this reader has massively failed to recognise these strengths!
Told in third person from recently divorced (and already partnered anew) Stella’s point of view, Feigel also uses the rather strange narrative device of Stella telling the others’ stories in third person too. Stella’s voice seems to fade almost immediately so that one wonders why the whole novel could not have been told in a more traditional third person narrative. This feels like a failed stylistic experiment.
I’m not a reader who has to ‘like’ characters before I can enjoy a novel. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have enjoyed classics like Graham Greene’s ‘Brighton Rock’ or the recent brilliantly written ‘Night Boat to Tangier’ by Kevin Barry. Feigel’s characters are certainly not likeable in the main: they are often self-absorbed, disloyal, and pretty dull but I can’t see what she is hoping to show her readers by presenting them as such. Is the patriarchy at fault? Not obviously – most of these women are using their men as much as the men use them.
Feigel can clearly write (hence 2 stars rather than 1) so this novel feels like a wasted opportunity, both for her and the reader!
April 23, 2020
Thanks John Murray Press and NetGalley for my advanced copy of this novel!
My gosh. I found this book so difficult to get into, but somehow forced myself through the first chunk, because I’d already downloaded my ARC and I’m trying to make the most of all of the reading material I have. The Group is voyeuristic look into the lives of a group of female friends turning forty. It’s a pastiche of contemporary life and friendship, and supposedly delves into fraught relationships and tensions amongst the group.
I just wasn’t so sure.
I abandoned this book at 10%, which is already longer than I wanted to read. The characters seemed extremely privileged; relentlessly so. Problems raised by Stella seemed to be non-problems, given the current climate, and whilst I appreciated that I perhaps wasn’t the target audience, it was almost unbearable to sift through. The story is told in third-person, and I think this stylistic element would work were it not for a total lack of dialogue to help move the pace along, or for the fact that Stella didn’t seem to be an inwards-looking character at all. It just fell totally flat.
My gosh. I found this book so difficult to get into, but somehow forced myself through the first chunk, because I’d already downloaded my ARC and I’m trying to make the most of all of the reading material I have. The Group is voyeuristic look into the lives of a group of female friends turning forty. It’s a pastiche of contemporary life and friendship, and supposedly delves into fraught relationships and tensions amongst the group.
I just wasn’t so sure.
I abandoned this book at 10%, which is already longer than I wanted to read. The characters seemed extremely privileged; relentlessly so. Problems raised by Stella seemed to be non-problems, given the current climate, and whilst I appreciated that I perhaps wasn’t the target audience, it was almost unbearable to sift through. The story is told in third-person, and I think this stylistic element would work were it not for a total lack of dialogue to help move the pace along, or for the fact that Stella didn’t seem to be an inwards-looking character at all. It just fell totally flat.
October 10, 2020
Would be great to read/write the story for the men characters in this book.
May 30, 2023
sel raamatul polnud otseselt midagi viga, aga mulle jäi lõpuni selgusetuks, miks ta on kirjutatud ja miks ma teda loen.
vahepeal lugesin teiste arvustusi (mh lootuses leida üles see arvustus/tutvustus, mille põhjal see raamat mu lugemisnimekirja üldse sattus) ja sain teada, et tegu on mingi juba olemasoleva raamatu uusversiooniga. no umbes nagu võetakse mõni Jane Austeni raamat ja tõstetakse selle tegevus 21. sajandisse. siin siis oli 1930ndate (vist) lugu kirjutatud üle 2010ndate lõpupoolel (post-Brexit, pre-Covid, #MeToo ajastu). ja vb kui oleks originaali lugenud, saaks paremini aru, miks seda kõike vaja oli.
see oli lihtsalt üks lugu seltskonnast naistest nende 40nda sünnipäeva kandis, sõbrannad ülikoolist saadik. valge briti keskklass, üks viimaseid aastakäike, kes ei pidanud oma kõrghariduse eest ise maksma. mingil maagilisel moel saavad nad endale lubada koristajaid ja lapsehoidjaid ja avaraid kortereid Põhja-Londoni ihaldusväärsetes piirkondades. võiks ju loota, et siit tuleb minimaalselt briti versioon seksist ja linnast? aga midagi nende eludes eriti ei juhtu peale selle, et kellel on lapsed, see kahetseb neid, ja kellel ei ole, see kahetseb, et pole; abikaasad petavad neid ja peikad valmistavad pettumust; terapeudist pole kah nagu abi. ja ongi kogu lugu.
ainus, mis mind selle raamatu juures erutas ja intrigeeris, oli see viis, kuidas ta oli kirja pandud - meil on kõiketeadev jutustaja, kes on ise üks neist viiest naisest, ja ta jutustab lugu läbi kõigi viie vaatenurga, olles teiste nelja naise seisukohalt kõrvaltegelane. ma ei oska seda vist väga hästi seletada, aga siin on hetki stiilis "astusin restorani sisse ja Kay mõtles mind nähes, et see kleit ei istu mulle eriti hästi". ja see on päris... huvitav võte ja meeldib mulle.
vahepeal lugesin teiste arvustusi (mh lootuses leida üles see arvustus/tutvustus, mille põhjal see raamat mu lugemisnimekirja üldse sattus) ja sain teada, et tegu on mingi juba olemasoleva raamatu uusversiooniga. no umbes nagu võetakse mõni Jane Austeni raamat ja tõstetakse selle tegevus 21. sajandisse. siin siis oli 1930ndate (vist) lugu kirjutatud üle 2010ndate lõpupoolel (post-Brexit, pre-Covid, #MeToo ajastu). ja vb kui oleks originaali lugenud, saaks paremini aru, miks seda kõike vaja oli.
see oli lihtsalt üks lugu seltskonnast naistest nende 40nda sünnipäeva kandis, sõbrannad ülikoolist saadik. valge briti keskklass, üks viimaseid aastakäike, kes ei pidanud oma kõrghariduse eest ise maksma. mingil maagilisel moel saavad nad endale lubada koristajaid ja lapsehoidjaid ja avaraid kortereid Põhja-Londoni ihaldusväärsetes piirkondades. võiks ju loota, et siit tuleb minimaalselt briti versioon seksist ja linnast? aga midagi nende eludes eriti ei juhtu peale selle, et kellel on lapsed, see kahetseb neid, ja kellel ei ole, see kahetseb, et pole; abikaasad petavad neid ja peikad valmistavad pettumust; terapeudist pole kah nagu abi. ja ongi kogu lugu.
ainus, mis mind selle raamatu juures erutas ja intrigeeris, oli see viis, kuidas ta oli kirja pandud - meil on kõiketeadev jutustaja, kes on ise üks neist viiest naisest, ja ta jutustab lugu läbi kõigi viie vaatenurga, olles teiste nelja naise seisukohalt kõrvaltegelane. ma ei oska seda vist väga hästi seletada, aga siin on hetki stiilis "astusin restorani sisse ja Kay mõtles mind nähes, et see kleit ei istu mulle eriti hästi". ja see on päris... huvitav võte ja meeldib mulle.
November 8, 2020
Не знаю, десять лет назад я не смогла бы это читать - пять женщин и их страдания о мужчинах, детях, отсутствии детей, ми-ту (естественно), сексе, и прочее. А теперь это все, что меня интересует!
В целом книжка хорошая, но смущает полное отсутствие юмора и прямой речи, из-за чего немножко засыпаешь.
В целом книжка хорошая, но смущает полное отсутствие юмора и прямой речи, из-за чего немножко засыпаешь.
March 10, 2020
Cultural historian Lara Feigel took inspiration from Mary McCarthy’s The Group, a landmark 1963 novel, as a model for thinking through contemporary women’s lives in twenty-first century London. As a fan of the original I was looking forward to a modern take on it, but found myself disappointed.
Due to the way this book is narrated, (one of the group of friends narrates for all of them), the women who make up The Group in this book, come across as fairly bland characters. The distancing through the narrators commentary makes it hard to work up any emotion for them or their plights. They are all dealing with various relationship issues. One's husband has had an affair with another friend in the group, one petitions a friend to have a child together, one worries she doesn't like her kid and has a weird struggle going on with her cleaner...and so on.. Here's the thing. I just found it all so dull. I could barely tell the characters and their husbands / paramours apart they seemed so interchangeable.
The age old story of women being expected to bear the brunt of housework and childcare is still central, and the #metoo movement is discussed within, but there is no real bite or jeopardy to the stories and it left me feeling very detached.
With many thanks to NetGalley for providing an ebook arc.
Due to the way this book is narrated, (one of the group of friends narrates for all of them), the women who make up The Group in this book, come across as fairly bland characters. The distancing through the narrators commentary makes it hard to work up any emotion for them or their plights. They are all dealing with various relationship issues. One's husband has had an affair with another friend in the group, one petitions a friend to have a child together, one worries she doesn't like her kid and has a weird struggle going on with her cleaner...and so on.. Here's the thing. I just found it all so dull. I could barely tell the characters and their husbands / paramours apart they seemed so interchangeable.
The age old story of women being expected to bear the brunt of housework and childcare is still central, and the #metoo movement is discussed within, but there is no real bite or jeopardy to the stories and it left me feeling very detached.
With many thanks to NetGalley for providing an ebook arc.
July 8, 2020
Here we have the Stepford women of Hampstead, obsessed with their men, their therapists, all written with such appalling smugness. Their careers are just the occasional vague backdrop to all of this. No humour (bemused this has been called comic), the characters indistinguishable, in a fest of deeply solipsistic navel gazing.
It's all so cool in tone, so void of any real emotion. Curious.
Women can be very funny, independent, bright, unreliable, loyal, disloyal, etc. (read McCarthy's fabulous original) whereas all we have here is a self conscious overwrought attempt at literary fiction, written in a curiously deadened sepulchral tone.
I note the author is a Guardian journalist who reviews other writers. I bought this book on the basis of the glowing recommendations from Hadley and Cusk and a couple of positive reviews and am disappointed it has been such a dull and often laborious read. No real friendship, no warmth, and worst of all, no comedy!
It's all so cool in tone, so void of any real emotion. Curious.
Women can be very funny, independent, bright, unreliable, loyal, disloyal, etc. (read McCarthy's fabulous original) whereas all we have here is a self conscious overwrought attempt at literary fiction, written in a curiously deadened sepulchral tone.
I note the author is a Guardian journalist who reviews other writers. I bought this book on the basis of the glowing recommendations from Hadley and Cusk and a couple of positive reviews and am disappointed it has been such a dull and often laborious read. No real friendship, no warmth, and worst of all, no comedy!
March 12, 2020
I had high hopes for 'The Group' by Lara Feigel. The comments on its front cover by Tessa Hadley and Rachel Cusk promised "pure pleasure," and a "very funny and intelligent book," and I was excited to read a story about women of a similar age to me, negotiating their lives and friendships.
However, from the get go I didn't enjoy this book and ultimately gave up on it quite quickly. This was largely because of the style in which this book was written. The point of view of the novel was solely Stella's, even when she wasn't present in the room and was describing the introspections of the other characters. This made it hard to invest, particularly as Stella didn't appeal to me as a character. It was also because things seemed to move very slowly and therefore I wasn't encouraged to keep reading in order to find out what was going to happen.
However, from the get go I didn't enjoy this book and ultimately gave up on it quite quickly. This was largely because of the style in which this book was written. The point of view of the novel was solely Stella's, even when she wasn't present in the room and was describing the introspections of the other characters. This made it hard to invest, particularly as Stella didn't appeal to me as a character. It was also because things seemed to move very slowly and therefore I wasn't encouraged to keep reading in order to find out what was going to happen.
July 6, 2020
Thanks to NetGalley and The Publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
I wanted to like this book, but I found it irritating. I found the characters unlikable and stereotyping of white middle class women. It tried to address too many moral issues and was too judgy in trying not to be judgemental.
Well written and nice to see a book about this age group of woman, but I couldn't connect with it, so was left disappointed.
Edited 06/07/20. Reduced star rating from 3 to 2 as it is not on par with my other 3 star rated books
I wanted to like this book, but I found it irritating. I found the characters unlikable and stereotyping of white middle class women. It tried to address too many moral issues and was too judgy in trying not to be judgemental.
Well written and nice to see a book about this age group of woman, but I couldn't connect with it, so was left disappointed.
Edited 06/07/20. Reduced star rating from 3 to 2 as it is not on par with my other 3 star rated books
July 9, 2024
got to p 124 & cd not bear any more of these amorphous dreary spoilt rich women. Read it just after reading Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin....with which it compares very poorly.
It has the dated tone & air of book written by a highly literate middle class Londoner who wanted to 'publish a novel' to give her life meaning.
& not in the same class as the Mary McCarthy....
It has the dated tone & air of book written by a highly literate middle class Londoner who wanted to 'publish a novel' to give her life meaning.
& not in the same class as the Mary McCarthy....
May 17, 2020
I managed to finish this book, but it was very hard going. I really did not enjoy this book at all! I didn’t like the style of the writing and I didn’t like how the main character was narrating her friends lives as though she was living their lives. I felt as though it was very anti men. I know that one character a male had been accused of sexual acts and exposing himself to women, but it wasn’t handled very well.
All I could take from this book was how anti men these women were. As though their husbands were a waist of space, didn’t see to their needs or were having affairs. How these women were still friends for so long after they had all shared a house when they were at university together is beyond me. Especially seeing one of the characters had a long running affair with one of her so called friends husbands, and when she found out about it they still ended up being friends.
I really don’t have anything positive to say about this book, it was so hard going to read. I kept on reading hoping that it would get better. Sadly it didn’t and as for the end of the book I was totally baffled. I also felt that this book made me feel depressed while reading it.
Stella, Helena, Kay, Polly and Priss all met when they shared a house together at university. Twenty years down the line as they are all approaching their fortieth birthdays. They are still friends, but not quite in the same way.
Stella: Narrates whats going on in her friends lives, how they are or aren’t coping with family life. She and her husband have separated as things weren’t as they should be. When Stella did everything she could to get pregnant for the second time it pushed her husband away. So they live separately and share the parenting.
Helena: Is a documentary presenter. She’s single and wan’t a baby so she and her gay best friend decide to have a baby together. While she is pregnant she meets a younger woman and they start to have a relationship, but Helena’s pregnancy put strains on their relationship as her partner doesn’t want children.
Kay: Is married to a philanderer. Who doesn’t really take much responsibility in helping her with their children. She is struggling mentally and physically and she ends up just going off on her own for a while leaving her husband to deal with everything. As she needs to try and get herself back.
Polly: Is a surgeon who surgically rebuilds young girls and women private parts after they have been mutilated. She is very angry with what has happened to her patients and she seems to keep hold of this anger. She’s also been having an affair with her boss who is old enough to be her father. She eventually puts a stop to their relationship as she know it can’t go anywhere as she realises she wants a proper relationship.
Priss: Seems to have it all. She has a style that others try to copy. Along with having a good looking husband and wonderful children, but it not enough for her she’s fed up of being a stay at home mum. She likes the idea of opening her own little cafe which she eventually does along with help from a man who she ends up having an affair with almost in retaliation for her husbands affair.
All I could take from this book was how anti men these women were. As though their husbands were a waist of space, didn’t see to their needs or were having affairs. How these women were still friends for so long after they had all shared a house when they were at university together is beyond me. Especially seeing one of the characters had a long running affair with one of her so called friends husbands, and when she found out about it they still ended up being friends.
I really don’t have anything positive to say about this book, it was so hard going to read. I kept on reading hoping that it would get better. Sadly it didn’t and as for the end of the book I was totally baffled. I also felt that this book made me feel depressed while reading it.
Stella, Helena, Kay, Polly and Priss all met when they shared a house together at university. Twenty years down the line as they are all approaching their fortieth birthdays. They are still friends, but not quite in the same way.
Stella: Narrates whats going on in her friends lives, how they are or aren’t coping with family life. She and her husband have separated as things weren’t as they should be. When Stella did everything she could to get pregnant for the second time it pushed her husband away. So they live separately and share the parenting.
Helena: Is a documentary presenter. She’s single and wan’t a baby so she and her gay best friend decide to have a baby together. While she is pregnant she meets a younger woman and they start to have a relationship, but Helena’s pregnancy put strains on their relationship as her partner doesn’t want children.
Kay: Is married to a philanderer. Who doesn’t really take much responsibility in helping her with their children. She is struggling mentally and physically and she ends up just going off on her own for a while leaving her husband to deal with everything. As she needs to try and get herself back.
Polly: Is a surgeon who surgically rebuilds young girls and women private parts after they have been mutilated. She is very angry with what has happened to her patients and she seems to keep hold of this anger. She’s also been having an affair with her boss who is old enough to be her father. She eventually puts a stop to their relationship as she know it can’t go anywhere as she realises she wants a proper relationship.
Priss: Seems to have it all. She has a style that others try to copy. Along with having a good looking husband and wonderful children, but it not enough for her she’s fed up of being a stay at home mum. She likes the idea of opening her own little cafe which she eventually does along with help from a man who she ends up having an affair with almost in retaliation for her husbands affair.
June 10, 2023
Unfortunately this book didn't work for me - if anything it served to illustrate the gulf between Gen X and Millenials and how the former luxuriate with their mortgages, traditional family setups and how they almost celebrate a lack of emotional growth in their lives.
Focusing on a group of University friends, The Group is populated with too many characters and each is confusingly only slightly different from the other.
Gaining an insight into the inner worlds of these women, time and time again I asked myself 'is this it?' is this the lot of women? To be codependently bonded to friends met at 19 under the veneer that long relationships are worth saving simply because they've been long? The sunken cost fallacy rattled around in my brain repeatedly reading this book.
Disappointingly, the narrative surrounding the creepy uncle and MeToo movement was uncomfortable to read, with no clear resolution. At times I wondered how this book could be such a recent publication because important social and cultural reckonings are treated as peripheral and irrelevant to the lives of these women from 'the group'. Tokenistic nods to gynecological violence felt like an add on here and this bordered on insulting to be quite honest.
What was most jarring for me was the wealth - second houses in Cornwall, opening cafes on a whim, constant meals out. It just felt like these were spoiled women making drama for themselves without having the emotional intelligence to move on from friendships utterly without boundaries. University is a formative life experience, sure, but there is a big world out there with many people - we all change personalities from our student days. Not in this novel however...
Finally, we never really get to know the narrator and in terms of structure, I'm not quite sure the diary-entry-style quite worked. For me, this book was not as incisive, witty or real as its precursor by Mary McCarthy and I don't think it accurately reflects the lived experience of most women in the 21st Century - even those who are Gen X!
Focusing on a group of University friends, The Group is populated with too many characters and each is confusingly only slightly different from the other.
Gaining an insight into the inner worlds of these women, time and time again I asked myself 'is this it?' is this the lot of women? To be codependently bonded to friends met at 19 under the veneer that long relationships are worth saving simply because they've been long? The sunken cost fallacy rattled around in my brain repeatedly reading this book.
Disappointingly, the narrative surrounding the creepy uncle and MeToo movement was uncomfortable to read, with no clear resolution. At times I wondered how this book could be such a recent publication because important social and cultural reckonings are treated as peripheral and irrelevant to the lives of these women from 'the group'. Tokenistic nods to gynecological violence felt like an add on here and this bordered on insulting to be quite honest.
What was most jarring for me was the wealth - second houses in Cornwall, opening cafes on a whim, constant meals out. It just felt like these were spoiled women making drama for themselves without having the emotional intelligence to move on from friendships utterly without boundaries. University is a formative life experience, sure, but there is a big world out there with many people - we all change personalities from our student days. Not in this novel however...
Finally, we never really get to know the narrator and in terms of structure, I'm not quite sure the diary-entry-style quite worked. For me, this book was not as incisive, witty or real as its precursor by Mary McCarthy and I don't think it accurately reflects the lived experience of most women in the 21st Century - even those who are Gen X!
March 6, 2020
This book follows the story of women over a year as they turn forty. Friends from university they have stuck together, more or less, for the last two decades and reflect back on their life and where they are now throughout the course of the book. The narrative is unusual, one of the characters takes on an omniscient narrative to her friends’ perspective. Is it her projecting on them? Is she meant to be omniscient? It is never made clear.
In brutal honesty this book was a chore. It was described as ‘funny’ and ‘engaging’ where as in actual fact it was a long winded moan. We are meant to empathise with these white middle class women With stable careers and relationships (-ish) and acknowledge that all their moaning is justified. They all come across as at least mildly depressed and to be honest I pitied the characters rather than empathised. Maybe I am in the wrong demographic. As a 20-something I just couldn’t relate to the characters and I found myself hating them for endlessly bemoaning their lives when they actually had so much to be thankful for. It dragged on and it was a relief when it ended.
Having said that, Feigel is clearly a good writer. Other than finding the plot and characters woefully lacking she writes in a way that I’m sure many will find appealing. I suspect this book is marmite and I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see it on shortlists whether rightly or wrongly.
In brutal honesty this book was a chore. It was described as ‘funny’ and ‘engaging’ where as in actual fact it was a long winded moan. We are meant to empathise with these white middle class women With stable careers and relationships (-ish) and acknowledge that all their moaning is justified. They all come across as at least mildly depressed and to be honest I pitied the characters rather than empathised. Maybe I am in the wrong demographic. As a 20-something I just couldn’t relate to the characters and I found myself hating them for endlessly bemoaning their lives when they actually had so much to be thankful for. It dragged on and it was a relief when it ended.
Having said that, Feigel is clearly a good writer. Other than finding the plot and characters woefully lacking she writes in a way that I’m sure many will find appealing. I suspect this book is marmite and I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see it on shortlists whether rightly or wrongly.
January 6, 2021
This was a strange book. All the chapters are narrated by one of the five friends, Stella, who somehow knows exactly what her friends are thinking in their chapters. Stella's character seemed the least coherent to me (and that's saying something, because Kay and Priss were hard to get a handle on too).
The whole thing felt fairly inconsequential. There were glimmers of plot: Polly's job sounded interesting, Kay ran away for a month. Mostly though there were descriptions of what seemed to me deeply unsatisfactory marital/romantic relationships, but which the characters appeared to see as the norm. Maybe my standards are too high, but I wanted to tell the author that it's possible to be far happier in a relationship than she seemed to conceive of. There were a lot of instances of mothers having almost obsessive relationships with their (girl) babies and then going off them once they became toddlers and gained a mind of their own, which was disturbing in more than one way.
I suppose there must have been something in it (the #metoo sections looked as if they were going somewhere but fizzled out) since I have found so much to say, but I wouldn't recommend it.
The whole thing felt fairly inconsequential. There were glimmers of plot: Polly's job sounded interesting, Kay ran away for a month. Mostly though there were descriptions of what seemed to me deeply unsatisfactory marital/romantic relationships, but which the characters appeared to see as the norm. Maybe my standards are too high, but I wanted to tell the author that it's possible to be far happier in a relationship than she seemed to conceive of. There were a lot of instances of mothers having almost obsessive relationships with their (girl) babies and then going off them once they became toddlers and gained a mind of their own, which was disturbing in more than one way.
I suppose there must have been something in it (the #metoo sections looked as if they were going somewhere but fizzled out) since I have found so much to say, but I wouldn't recommend it.
February 24, 2020
This book holds some promise, but unfortunately it was unable to keep me interested for long enough, for me to be bothered to hang around and find out what that promise is.
I found the writing style quite different, but it grew on me.
I very rarely do not finish a book, but I really couldn’t see where this book was going at all.
The premise is there is a group of friends who have known each other since sharing a house together at university. The book just seemed to be page after page of describing each person, their life, their marriage etc.
It might be that something happens later in the book that really brings it to life, but with so many other books shouting at me to be read, I’m afraid I wasn’t prepared to struggle on.
It was missing a vital something to make me want to continue, but it’s hard to explain what exactly.
I’m sure this type of book might appeal to some people.
However the word “hilarious” in the description is woefully inaccurate and misleading.
I would rate this book 2⭐️ based on it being unfinished.
I found the writing style quite different, but it grew on me.
I very rarely do not finish a book, but I really couldn’t see where this book was going at all.
The premise is there is a group of friends who have known each other since sharing a house together at university. The book just seemed to be page after page of describing each person, their life, their marriage etc.
It might be that something happens later in the book that really brings it to life, but with so many other books shouting at me to be read, I’m afraid I wasn’t prepared to struggle on.
It was missing a vital something to make me want to continue, but it’s hard to explain what exactly.
I’m sure this type of book might appeal to some people.
However the word “hilarious” in the description is woefully inaccurate and misleading.
I would rate this book 2⭐️ based on it being unfinished.
June 30, 2021
My usual complaint - why can't authors use speech marks? She's writing it and knows what's what, whilst I'm reading it and am not sure whether the words refer to spoken word or some prose, so I lose the flow she wants us to have.
Because of this and the fact that Stella seemed neurotic, I gave up.
Because of this and the fact that Stella seemed neurotic, I gave up.
November 23, 2020
Frankly this was boring, I lost track of which white, middle class, middle aged woman was which (and I am one!).
And I didn't really care either.
And I didn't really care either.
July 8, 2020
https://beverleyhasread.wordpress.com/
The Group, the debut novel by Lara Feigel is set in modern day London, features a group of female friends who met at University twenty years earlier and is an examination of friendship, motherhood, marriage, sex, sexuality, relationships, Me Too, mental health, feminism and everything in between. The women, Priss, Kay, Helena, Polly and our narrator Stella are all in their late thirties/early forties, middle-class and are all at a tipping point in their lives.
It’s brilliantly written and uses a very unusual style. Our narrator is Stella and she tells us about her friends, dropping in small morsels of their history, of how they interlink, their closeness and their secrets. It’s really well done, so much so that until there was a reference to herself, I forgot Stella was even narrating. It really works as it allows us to both get closer to the group and understand them fully whilst keeping us just far enough removed that there is mystery and a desire to know more.
This book really resonated with me. I too am in my late thirties, and although I don’t live in London, am possibly not quite as middle class as these women and sadly don’t work in publishing like some of the characters in the book I found that there were enormous swathes of the book which I could identify with.
It is an intelligent examination of women and their different facets. In the group of five three are mothers, one is trying to be a mother and the fifth is undecided about having children. It seems reductive to say “three are mothers”, as in their own ways all five women are mothers; to each other, to partners, to siblings and to parents. Quite often I read books where women are almost put in two camps, those with children and those who are child free and the grey area in between isn’t examined, or if it is it is clumsy and oftentimes insulting. In this book, the three women with children are experiencing different versions of motherhood. Lara Feigel lays bare the difficulties, the highs and the lows and isn’t afraid to write about how much of a woman’s identity is tied up in and lost by motherhood.
She also explores what it is like to be a woman in her late thirties and not have children when your peers do. My ecopy of The Group is littered with highlighted sections which perfectly encapsulate what it feels like, especially when it comes to your time being seen as being less valuable, one line in particular stood out to me,
"Polly is the only one who’s not busy with procreation or children, so she is apparently the one who has time to care."
There is also a wonderful examination of the isolation, loneliness and the feeling of being “left behind in ordinariness by a woman who has been chosen by the gods to enter a magical realm” which I thought was perfectly pitched.
I think I am really drawn to books like this. It made me think and made me reflect, especially when it comes to the nature of female friendships. The Group is a snapshot of life for these five women in a time when their lives are in a state of flux. The friendship between women is a complex and intricate thing, and when women have been friends for this long it is susceptible to ebbs and flows. This isn’t a saccharine sweet portrayal of female friendships, in fact it as times brutal and difficult to read and feels incredibly honest and real.
I have barely scratched the surface of the themes explored in The Group. It is one of those books which provokes thought and may mean different things to different readers depending upon their life experiences. It is based on a book of the same name written by Mary McCarthy in 1963 and set in the 1930s in America. I am intrigued and I’m going to hunt a copy out as I’d love to read and compare the themes addressed in both novels.
If smart, insightful novels about modern life are your thing then The Group could be for you. It is insightful, relevant and current and days after reading it I keep thinking about it. Recommended.
The Group, the debut novel by Lara Feigel is set in modern day London, features a group of female friends who met at University twenty years earlier and is an examination of friendship, motherhood, marriage, sex, sexuality, relationships, Me Too, mental health, feminism and everything in between. The women, Priss, Kay, Helena, Polly and our narrator Stella are all in their late thirties/early forties, middle-class and are all at a tipping point in their lives.
It’s brilliantly written and uses a very unusual style. Our narrator is Stella and she tells us about her friends, dropping in small morsels of their history, of how they interlink, their closeness and their secrets. It’s really well done, so much so that until there was a reference to herself, I forgot Stella was even narrating. It really works as it allows us to both get closer to the group and understand them fully whilst keeping us just far enough removed that there is mystery and a desire to know more.
This book really resonated with me. I too am in my late thirties, and although I don’t live in London, am possibly not quite as middle class as these women and sadly don’t work in publishing like some of the characters in the book I found that there were enormous swathes of the book which I could identify with.
It is an intelligent examination of women and their different facets. In the group of five three are mothers, one is trying to be a mother and the fifth is undecided about having children. It seems reductive to say “three are mothers”, as in their own ways all five women are mothers; to each other, to partners, to siblings and to parents. Quite often I read books where women are almost put in two camps, those with children and those who are child free and the grey area in between isn’t examined, or if it is it is clumsy and oftentimes insulting. In this book, the three women with children are experiencing different versions of motherhood. Lara Feigel lays bare the difficulties, the highs and the lows and isn’t afraid to write about how much of a woman’s identity is tied up in and lost by motherhood.
She also explores what it is like to be a woman in her late thirties and not have children when your peers do. My ecopy of The Group is littered with highlighted sections which perfectly encapsulate what it feels like, especially when it comes to your time being seen as being less valuable, one line in particular stood out to me,
"Polly is the only one who’s not busy with procreation or children, so she is apparently the one who has time to care."
There is also a wonderful examination of the isolation, loneliness and the feeling of being “left behind in ordinariness by a woman who has been chosen by the gods to enter a magical realm” which I thought was perfectly pitched.
I think I am really drawn to books like this. It made me think and made me reflect, especially when it comes to the nature of female friendships. The Group is a snapshot of life for these five women in a time when their lives are in a state of flux. The friendship between women is a complex and intricate thing, and when women have been friends for this long it is susceptible to ebbs and flows. This isn’t a saccharine sweet portrayal of female friendships, in fact it as times brutal and difficult to read and feels incredibly honest and real.
I have barely scratched the surface of the themes explored in The Group. It is one of those books which provokes thought and may mean different things to different readers depending upon their life experiences. It is based on a book of the same name written by Mary McCarthy in 1963 and set in the 1930s in America. I am intrigued and I’m going to hunt a copy out as I’d love to read and compare the themes addressed in both novels.
If smart, insightful novels about modern life are your thing then The Group could be for you. It is insightful, relevant and current and days after reading it I keep thinking about it. Recommended.
Read
December 6, 2020Unsurprisingly maybe, upon considering her previous historical works and her brilliant memoir/literary analysis of Doris Lessing's life and writing, Lara Feigel's debut novel is a multi-layered, complex, deeply intelligent and accomplished work of art. At the core of its concept, Feigel seems to have undertaken the role of an anthropologist studying (angry) white middle-class middle-aged women in London, the novel's title 'The Group' further emphasising this idea of an experiment. Indeed, just as Feigel used Doris Lessing as a springboard for making sense of personal expeience in 'Free Woman,' here she has used Mary McCarthy's novel 'The Group' as foundation stone for this novel. I have not read McCarthy's novel but now definitely want to. (It's well worth your time to read her essay: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...).
The novel is set in March to December 2018, in the wake of the Brexit referendum and the passion of the Me Too movement and during the Christine Blasey Ford hearing. Its a novel told from Stella's POV and from a deeply intimate and perceptive view of four of her friend's experiences. The novel takes place over a series of various social occasions or private conversations between different friendships (in turn displaying the different and complex dynamics within the group) and unravels the contradictory nature of being a women, about divorce/separation, adultery, relationships, motherhood, careers and, of course, female friendship. (As Stella says: “Our own lives make more sense when we compare them to each others.”) Structurally the novel dips in and out of the various character's lives and Feigel uses no speech marks, further emphasing the commoniality of experience/voice and the deep identification (and burden caused by this) that these women feel for one another, using the filter of friendship to deepen their experiences. Stella states: “We characterise ourselves, like characters in novels. But we'd look almost identitcal to most onlookers in our wealth, our privilege, our freedom of choice. And more importantly, these characteristics are so arbitrary: we could swap them between us at will. The real feelings – the love, desire, fear, anger, laughter – are the same, whoever experiences them. There's an ocean of experience and feeling which we just dip into. Yet we insist on each other's otherness, even as we fear it. Because our sameness disturbs us even more.”
However, although the experiences of the characters are similar, Feigel does make sure she cracks the novel open to wider themes and develop their differences; at one point she contrasts self-obsession with wider world issues such as female genital mutilation. The characters aren't particularly likeable, nor are they meant to be since they are rooted in reality. Feigel has written an excellent novel based on the struggles of women as partners, lovers, mothers, daughters, professionals and women on the onset of middle age in the modern world, as they try to find the answer to their predicament: “There's something so peculiar, almost nonexistent about our generation, coming of age before the internet, before the millennials.” An absolutely riveting read with layers of food for thought. I will be re-reading and telling friends to read it for a long time!
The novel is set in March to December 2018, in the wake of the Brexit referendum and the passion of the Me Too movement and during the Christine Blasey Ford hearing. Its a novel told from Stella's POV and from a deeply intimate and perceptive view of four of her friend's experiences. The novel takes place over a series of various social occasions or private conversations between different friendships (in turn displaying the different and complex dynamics within the group) and unravels the contradictory nature of being a women, about divorce/separation, adultery, relationships, motherhood, careers and, of course, female friendship. (As Stella says: “Our own lives make more sense when we compare them to each others.”) Structurally the novel dips in and out of the various character's lives and Feigel uses no speech marks, further emphasing the commoniality of experience/voice and the deep identification (and burden caused by this) that these women feel for one another, using the filter of friendship to deepen their experiences. Stella states: “We characterise ourselves, like characters in novels. But we'd look almost identitcal to most onlookers in our wealth, our privilege, our freedom of choice. And more importantly, these characteristics are so arbitrary: we could swap them between us at will. The real feelings – the love, desire, fear, anger, laughter – are the same, whoever experiences them. There's an ocean of experience and feeling which we just dip into. Yet we insist on each other's otherness, even as we fear it. Because our sameness disturbs us even more.”
However, although the experiences of the characters are similar, Feigel does make sure she cracks the novel open to wider themes and develop their differences; at one point she contrasts self-obsession with wider world issues such as female genital mutilation. The characters aren't particularly likeable, nor are they meant to be since they are rooted in reality. Feigel has written an excellent novel based on the struggles of women as partners, lovers, mothers, daughters, professionals and women on the onset of middle age in the modern world, as they try to find the answer to their predicament: “There's something so peculiar, almost nonexistent about our generation, coming of age before the internet, before the millennials.” An absolutely riveting read with layers of food for thought. I will be re-reading and telling friends to read it for a long time!
February 26, 2020
The Group is a compelling story which follows five female friends for nine months as they approach (or have already reached) the age of forty. It addresses and examines what it's like to be a woman in the post 'Me Too' era as well as looking at male perceptions of women. It also analyses how women regard themselves whilst simultaneously challenging their own as well as other people's expectations of them.
Lara Feigel uses the five university friends to illustrate that although contemporary women have the liberty to choose their own path in life, there is still an imbalance between the genders.The enormity of having children (or not, in some cases) is a subject that features throughout the novel and parenthood appears to weigh heavier on the mothers than it does on the male characters. However, this book does not sanctify women; they are portrayed as human beings who make mistakes and bad decisions and who are capable of betraying each other.
I found The Group to be an intellectual and experimental novel. It begins with a first person narrative in which the protagonists are introduced by Stella. However, the subsequent sections, each named after the person they involve, are written by an omniscient Stella in the third person. It is initially unclear whether these sections are authentic descriptions or Stella's reveries and merely a method she uses to impose thoughts and actions on others, as a means of justifying her own conduct.
Dialogue is scarce and the author has chosen to omit speech marks. To begin with I found that the effect of using Stella as narrator, combined with a substantial use of the present tense, created a distancing effect and a lack of emotion. At times it reminded me of the voiceover narration in Louis Malle's 'Les Amants' but I soon warmed to the style and became involved in the story, engaging with the characters and wanting to know how the different strands would unfold.
The description of 'The Group' on Netgalley states it is 'very funny and brilliant.' I agree with the latter but did not find it 'funny' and thought it rather dark in places. However, it is a very deep and contemporary book that I enjoyed a lot and recommend to others with the warning that it's most definitely not 'Chick lit'! Thank-you to Netgalley and John Murray Press for allowing me to read this advance copy.
Lara Feigel uses the five university friends to illustrate that although contemporary women have the liberty to choose their own path in life, there is still an imbalance between the genders.The enormity of having children (or not, in some cases) is a subject that features throughout the novel and parenthood appears to weigh heavier on the mothers than it does on the male characters. However, this book does not sanctify women; they are portrayed as human beings who make mistakes and bad decisions and who are capable of betraying each other.
I found The Group to be an intellectual and experimental novel. It begins with a first person narrative in which the protagonists are introduced by Stella. However, the subsequent sections, each named after the person they involve, are written by an omniscient Stella in the third person. It is initially unclear whether these sections are authentic descriptions or Stella's reveries and merely a method she uses to impose thoughts and actions on others, as a means of justifying her own conduct.
Dialogue is scarce and the author has chosen to omit speech marks. To begin with I found that the effect of using Stella as narrator, combined with a substantial use of the present tense, created a distancing effect and a lack of emotion. At times it reminded me of the voiceover narration in Louis Malle's 'Les Amants' but I soon warmed to the style and became involved in the story, engaging with the characters and wanting to know how the different strands would unfold.
The description of 'The Group' on Netgalley states it is 'very funny and brilliant.' I agree with the latter but did not find it 'funny' and thought it rather dark in places. However, it is a very deep and contemporary book that I enjoyed a lot and recommend to others with the warning that it's most definitely not 'Chick lit'! Thank-you to Netgalley and John Murray Press for allowing me to read this advance copy.
March 26, 2020
I absolutely love The Group by Mary Mcarthy so I was very much looking forward to reading this.
I think Lara Feigel was very true to the original and that might be why it's not necessarily that popular with many reviewers because in a way it's so difficult to relate to that sort of story in the modern day. It was easier to understand the difficulties of privileged women in the 1930s because no matter how privileged a woman was she was still "less than a man".
That said, I did enjoy this book because I just accepted that a story of privileged women in our time with very middle-class problems would probably mean that I wouldn't like them very much and on the whole I didn't, but I was interested in their lives mostly because of the excellent writing. All of them were imperfect and most of them were unlikeable to a lesser or greater degree and I felt that their stories offered a view of lives that we think we know about but really we only know what we see on the outside which I think the author was trying to tell us. Each of them seems perfect in their own way and each of them is flawed in their own way. They are all approaching 40 or have just passed 40, an age at which we think we should have it all sorted out only to get there and realise that we really don't and that we'll carry on getting things wrong and learning for as long as we get to live, that we may never have it all sorted but that's fine too.
The #MeToo story was done very well, I think because some of the women just refused to believe that this man they knew could be such a preditor. That was very realistic because much as we'd like to think that women stand together when they hear that x has done something unforgivable to y, we don't always. We try to find excuses if the preditor is someone we like. I hope that anyone reading the various reactions of this group will think carefully about their own reaction to accusations. Maybe!
All in all, an interesting read that I thought about quite a lot when I was reading and during the time I wasn't reading it as well. A book that makes me think is always a good read for me.
Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review.
I think Lara Feigel was very true to the original and that might be why it's not necessarily that popular with many reviewers because in a way it's so difficult to relate to that sort of story in the modern day. It was easier to understand the difficulties of privileged women in the 1930s because no matter how privileged a woman was she was still "less than a man".
That said, I did enjoy this book because I just accepted that a story of privileged women in our time with very middle-class problems would probably mean that I wouldn't like them very much and on the whole I didn't, but I was interested in their lives mostly because of the excellent writing. All of them were imperfect and most of them were unlikeable to a lesser or greater degree and I felt that their stories offered a view of lives that we think we know about but really we only know what we see on the outside which I think the author was trying to tell us. Each of them seems perfect in their own way and each of them is flawed in their own way. They are all approaching 40 or have just passed 40, an age at which we think we should have it all sorted out only to get there and realise that we really don't and that we'll carry on getting things wrong and learning for as long as we get to live, that we may never have it all sorted but that's fine too.
The #MeToo story was done very well, I think because some of the women just refused to believe that this man they knew could be such a preditor. That was very realistic because much as we'd like to think that women stand together when they hear that x has done something unforgivable to y, we don't always. We try to find excuses if the preditor is someone we like. I hope that anyone reading the various reactions of this group will think carefully about their own reaction to accusations. Maybe!
All in all, an interesting read that I thought about quite a lot when I was reading and during the time I wasn't reading it as well. A book that makes me think is always a good read for me.
Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review.
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