If books were dresses...(a weekly post where I create fashionable wear with book cover art)
The Group
by Mary McCarthy
First published: 1962
New York Times Best Seller list in 1963
Adapted to film: 1966
Directed by: Sidney Lumet
This week's dress is part of my Mad Men Mini-hoopla event, July 29-31, 2010.
Mad Men sighting:
This book makes an appearance in Mad Men episode ten, season three. Betty Draper is seen reading this novel in the bathtub.
I used a vintage book promo instead of a current edition book cover for the dress.
Description from amazon.com:
Mary McCarthy's most celebrated novel portrays the lives, and aspirations of eight Vassar graduates.
"The group" meet in New York following commencement to attend the wedding of one of their members and reconvene seven years later at her funeral.The woman are complicated, compelling, vivid, and, above all, determined not to become stuffy and frightened like "Mother and Dad" but to lead fulfilling, emancipated lives.
Interesting excerpt:
Its continuing relevance is one of the book's most extraordinary attributes. When Candace Bushnell was advised by an editor in the early 1990s to write "the modern-day version of The Group", she responded with Sex and the City, a collection of confessional essays about a group of female friends that spawned a multimillion-dollar TV series and film.
"The Group reminds us that not much has really changed," writes Bushnell in the foreword to the new edition. "It's a book I prize, not only for its blistering satire, but for its technical elements, including McCarthy's brilliant use of the soliloquy, her pacing and razor-sharp descriptions." -from article by Elizabeth Day, The Observer
* source for silhouette
