I don't really know what made me pick up Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's better in the first half than the second; it gets bogged down a little bit by the religion component in the second half. That said, the characters are imperfect and dynamic, and there's something kind of cathartic about reading about characters who just handle things poorly and emotionally.
After the experience of reading Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett, I thought I'd better go back and read Lucy Grealy's book.
It was...okay. So much of it was about her being sick as a kid, which, while tragic, wasn't particularly interesting, really. I feel terrible saying that, but it's true. She got a lot more interesting later in life when we meet her in Patchett's book. Autobiography of a Face did get me thinking about how differently people who spent a lot of time in a hospital as a child see doctors and hospitals. That, however, was the most perception the book inspired in me. It's not a bad book, don't get me wrong, but as memoir goes, it was average.
Some of that may be living in this post-James Frey America. I think I'm finding myself more suspicious of memoir now (which is probably not much of a statement given that Freygate was so recently). I just looked back at my post about Frey's book am relieved to see that I found him arrogant back then, too.
I was drawn to Mary McCarthy's The Group for two somewhat silly reasons. The first is that Mary McCarthy and I have the same birthdate, and the second is that she lived in the building I live in now. That said, I found The Group completely delightful. It's a book about eight friends from Vassar College and the five years between their college graduation and five year reunion. As a graduate of a Seven Sister college, and someone who is in that exact zone of time (my five year reunion is in May), I found the whole thing relatable and delicious, in spite of it being set in the 1930s.
There are parts that are extremely risque for its time, and laugh out loud moments, and the ending is satisfying because it's timeless. I was struck the whole time I was reading it that it would be fun to attempt to write my own version of The Group, since there's been quite a lot of drama and intrigue among women I went to college with. However, I know the effect that The Group had on McCarthy's friendships, and I'd like to keep my friends, thank you.