The Company She Keeps

Told through six interlinked stories, this is a dazzling, fractured portrait of 1930s New York, and of the witty, bohemian heroine at the novel's heart. Through her encounters and experiences - with men, with radical politics, with psychoanalysis - we follow Margaret Sargent as she negotiates a fraught relationship between love and independence in a time of coming war.

Based loosely on the author's own life, The Company She Keeps won Mary McCarthy immediate acclaim for its bold insight, sly wit and virtuoso style.