Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
I really enjoyed the spare elegance of this memoir. It is a New Yorker style memoir, much like Nabokov’s “Speak Memory,” and I must say there are worse things than New Yorker style memoirs.
Each chapter was originally a self-contained (and well-paid) essay published in the New Yorker. Together they tell the story of McCarthy’s life. She was orphaned early, and brought up by her mother’s uncles and aunts. They were odd, abusive, particularly disliking the articulate Mary. She describes being framed by an sadistic and weird Uncle, and then being strapped by him.
Finally, a “health and safety issue” leads her Seattle grandparents to rescue her, and she moved from a claustrophobic, loveless controlling world in Minneapolis to an elegant, affluent home in Seattle. Love is still missing; however, she goes on to an elite boarding school she finds stimulating, and where she comes to life.
Mary McCarthy is a brilliant woman (Randall Jarrell’s totally hilarious portrait of Gertrude from Pictures from an Institution is based on Mary McCarthy) and this memoir is probably her best work.Clear, elegant writing, like a well-sanded bit of wood, an unself-pitying story-telling style, lots of telling detail, well-honed sentences which make you sigh, they are so perfect. A lovely glimpse into a vanished world
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More from my site
Mandatory Christmas Visits to Everyone in Mangalore (From my memoir in progress: Up to the Hills)
Walking on the Waters, Looking at Jesus, in the Shadow of the Big C (who Must not be Named)
Ithaca by Constantine Cavafy
In Him was life, and that life was the light of men
The Secret History of Hagar: When God Invisibly Comforts the Oppressed
I love reading books ever since I was a little kid. Now that I am a father myself, I encourage my kids to read good books. There are a lot of good books to read like the Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter or those which are written by Stephen King.