A Charmed Life by Mary McCarthy. 1955 Harcourt, Brace and Company, later printing. McCarthy was a prolific critic, memoirist, and novelist, known for her cutting wit and confident takedowns, culminating in a televised interview where she called Lillian Hellman a "dishonest writer," which led to a defamation lawsuit. Her work often skewered the milieu in which she ran, intellectual literary circles, and included thinly disguised characters based on her friends and acquaintances. Her most famous novel The Group, was a bestseller and turned into a film, yet this too alienated some friends. A Charmed Life takes place in a Cape Cod like setting where people of a certain class rationalize themselves to despair.

Condition: Jacket in good condition with chips and wear, book in good condition, boards soiled at the spine, slight lean.

"On the afternoon of John's mishap, they were wearing matching wool white sweaters."