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Mary McCarthy
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Mary McCarthy's Collected Memoirs: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, How I Grew, and Intellectual Memoirs Kindle Edition

by Mary McCarthy (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 19 ratings
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Three candid, affecting memoirs by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Group, including a National Book Award finalist.
In Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, Mary McCarthy begins with her recollections of a happy childhood cut tragically short by the death of her parents during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Tempering memory with invention, McCarthy describes how, orphaned at six, she spent much of her childhood shuttled between two sets of grandparents and three religions—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. Early on, McCarthy lets the reader in on her secret: The chapter you just read may not be wholly reliable—facts have been distilled through the hazy lens of time and distance.
How I Grew is McCarthy’s intensely personal autobiography of her life from age thirteen to twenty-one. With detail driven by an almost astonishing memory recall, the author gives us a masterful account of these formative years. From her wild adolescence—including losing her virginity at fourteen—through her eventual escape to Vassar, the bestselling novelist, essayist, and critic chronicles her relationships with family, friends, lovers, and the teachers who would influence her writing career.
And Intellectual Memoirs opens with McCarthy as a married twenty-four-year-old Communist and critic. She’s disciplined, dedicated, and sexually experimental: At one point she realizes that in twenty-four hours she “had slept with three different men.” Over the course of three years, she will have had two husbands, the second being the esteemed, much older critic Edmund Wilson. It is Wilson who becomes McCarthy’s mentor and muse, urging her to try her hand at fiction. Intellectual Memoirs is a vivid snapshot of a distinctive place and time—New York in the late 1930s—and the forces that shaped Mary McCarthy’s life as a woman and a writer.  
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  1. Print length
    713 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Open Road Media
  5. Publication date
    December 10, 2013
  6. File size
    16871 KB
  7. Page Flip
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Memories of a Catholic Girlhood:“Time has not dulled the sharpness of the image and incident here, and the portraiture has an exceptional definition.” —Kirkus Reviews
Praise for How I Grew:“A fascinating account.” —Library Journal
Praise for Intellectual Memoirs:“Vibrates with the wicked wit and moral astringency that made the author a giant of American belles-lettres.” —Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) was an American literary critic and author of more than two dozen books including the 1963 New York Times bestseller The Group. Born in Seattle, McCarthy studied at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and graduated in 1933. After moving to New York City, McCarthy became known for her incisive writing as a contributor to publications such as the Nation, the New Republic, and the New York Review of Books. Her debut novel, The Company She Keeps (1942), initiated her ascent to become one of the most celebrated writers of her generation, a reputation bolstered by the publication of her autobiography Memories of a Catholic Girlhood in 1957, as well as that of her now-classic novel The Group.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00GSE3X6K
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (December 10, 2013)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 10, 2013
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 16871 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 713 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 19 ratings

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Mary McCarthy

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
19 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

New York Momma
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2013
Verified Purchase
A gem! A masterpiece! I wanted more, and more, and more. Pitch perfect, from start to finish. So exciting to read.
4 people found this helpful
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NJ
4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2020
Verified Purchase
Thoughtful and helped relate to own experiences when growing up. Especially when she says about not being all that sure about accuracey of her memory.
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Lewis Samuels
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2016
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Her memoir is fascinating.
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Pearl
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2016
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A lovely book.
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Bill Baker
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating memoirs that will illuminate your own memories of growing up and becoming who you are....
Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2016
Mary McCarthy’s three memoirs are an extraordinary look at the creation of one of our great intellectuals, a powerful voice against the Vietnam War, and as intriguing, one of our major novelists

And she is also a stimulating and engrossing memoirist, one who will prick your own memory if not with similarities, then with differences, so that you are like me you will find yourself recalling times early in your life and later on too, episodes with your parents, with your aunts and uncles and grandparents, cousins and friends, who now may be lost to you due to distance or death.

Thus these three memoirs are not also fascinating in their own right, they are also catalysts for your own memories.
One person found this helpful
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