Birds of America: Introduction by Booker Prize-Winning Author Penelope Lively (Penguin Women Writers) - Softcover

Mary McCarthy was an American novelist, critic and political activist. Her debut novel, The Company She Keeps, launched her career as one of the most celebrated writers of her generation, a reputation bolstered by her controversial 1963 novel The Group, which topped the New York Times bestseller list for almost two years and was banned in several countries for its frank portrayal of female sexuality. McCarthy was married four times. She died in 1989.

An absorbing novel about a young man's voyage into adulthood, enlivened by Mary McCarthy's needling wit. You have to go away to understand home, you have to lose yourself to find yourself; Mary McCarthy's insight into her young hero - his awkward growing-up, his efforts to understand his time and place - create an authentic and thoughtful slice of cultural history. -- Hilary Mantel, Booker prize-winning author of 'Wolf Hall' and 'Bring Up the Bodies' This funny, grumpy, coming-of-age tale still strikes a chord. . . There is much in McCarthy's novel, published by Penguin in a new edition to mark the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage, that makes you say: "Yes! Exactly! Spot on." * The Times * Fiercely intelligent, insatiably combative, McCarthy's novels invite controversy -- Penelope Lively, from the introduction One of America's leading women of letters, a writer with a reputation for acerbic insights and penetrating prose * Guardian * A writer known for her immaculate prose, her wit, her glamour, her sexual adventures... and the shocking candor of her fiction * New Yorker * Birds of America brings to mind the teenage angst of Catcher in the Rye, but with a political conscience. Full of hilarious and extremely honest one-liners * Essential Journal * There was something so crisp and clever and bold about her writing -- Claire Tomalin McCarthy earned recognition for her cool, analytic intelligence and her exacting literary voice - a voice capable of moving from the frivolously feminine to the willfully cerebral, from girlish insouciance to bare-knuckled fury -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times * An endlessly fascinating novel * San Francisco Chronicle * A profoundly thoughtful and moving book * Life * In the same class as Henry James's The American and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer * Esquire * There was never anything "ladylike" about Mary McCarthy's writing. For aspiring female writers, she remains totemic. * Vanity Fair * I read it in one gulp -- Laura Freeman, author of 'The Reading Cure' A brilliant novel: honest, engaging and sharp as a tack -- Sarah Waters on 'The Group'