From Publishers Weekly
By the end of the first paragraph of this brief companion to her memoir How I Grew , McCarthy (1912-1989) has made clear the centers of her young life: love and work. At a May Day parade in New York City, she is a 24-year-old Communist and married woman. Both will change soon: she will become involved with the "fair young man" walking with her who "looked like Fred MacMurray," and she will become a Trotskyite. As in her Memories of a Catholic Girlhood , drivenness and a sense of inevitability here possess McCarthy; as her close friend Hardwick ( Sleepless Nights ) writes in the introduction, there was "a certain Jesuitical aspect to her moral life . . . habits, prejudices, moments, even fleeting ones, had to be accounted for, looked at, and written in the ledger." As a young writer, McCarthy produced a prodigious number of reviews for magazines like Partisan Review and the Nation . Her love life was equally active: at one point she "realized . . . that in twenty-foursic hours she had slept with three different men." Yet she believed in marriage, and in the space of the memoir's three years, she wed twice, the latter time to critic Edmund Wilson, 16 years her senior and the man who egged her on to try "imaginative writing." As the memoir moves through discussions of Stalinism and Trotskyism, the Moscow trials, the founding of the Partisan Review --and detailed descriptions of the furniture in her apartments--we watch an important mind forming. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this volume of her memoirs, McCarthy vividly recalls her early years in New York before she began writing novels and stories. At that time, she wrote reviews for the Nation and the New Republic , was active in the American Communist Party, and was married to activist actor/playwright Harold Johnsrud. The writing style is crisp, the recall unflinching; readers of McCarthy's novels and stories will recognize details from her fictional settings. This memoir, which continues the work begun in the first volume of her memoirs, How I Grew ( LJ 4/15/87), was the last work she completed before her death . Novelist Elizabeth Hardwick, a contemporary of McCarthy, wrote the perceptive and charming introduction to this slim volume. This is recommended for libraries with collections emphasizing women's fiction and workers' fiction. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/92.-Denise Johnson, Bradley Univ. Lib., Peoria, Ill.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
For all its final aborted promise, this slender sequel to How I Grew (1987), left unfinished at McCarthy's death in 1989, vibrates with the wicked wit and moral astringency that made the author a giant of American belles-lettres. If How I Grew covered the birth of her intellectual consciousness, this volume details the birth of McCarthy's career as a writer--practicing her craft as a twentysomething, Waspish book and theater critic at Partisan Review while accumulating the experience that would nourish her later career and quarrels (including her decisive break with Stalinism and the sequel encounter that inspired ``The Man in the Brooks Brothers Suit''). In her fond introduction, friend Elizabeth Hardwick traces McCarthy's tactile re-creation of time, place, and character to her ``somewhat obsessional concern for the integrity of sheer fact in matters both trivial and striking.'' The result, when combined with her familiar mockery of phonies and poseurs, is explosive laughter. Witness incidents about Corliss Lamont, a ``pawky freckled swain'' who unsuccessfully attempted to seduce her; and about a rival for her first husband's affections, ``a yellow-eyed lynxlike blonde given to stretching herself like the cats she fancied.'' Equally incapable of lying about herself--``self-deception always chilled me''--McCarthy recounts how she wrote a politically correct review for fellow-traveler Malcolm Cowley at The New Republic, drunkenly sat on Max Eastman's lap at a party, and slept with three different men within 24 hours. Most of all, she ruefully recalls how badly she hurt her lover, Partisan Review editor Philip Rahv, by embarking on an affair with, and later disastrous marriage to, Edmund Wilson. A small gem, viewing an era of deep political and personal engagement with no tears and a brave heart. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Book News, Inc.
Belletrist McCarthy died in 1989, before she was able to complete the last installment of this autobiographical work. She did finish a significant portion, which covers her years in New York from 1936 to 1938. With a substantial (15 pp.) foreword by Elizabeth Hardwick. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Book Description
Mary McCarthy vividly recalls her early years in New York before she began writing novels and stories. At that time, she wrote reviews for the Nation and the New Republic, was active in the American Communist Party, and was married to activist actor/playwright Harold Johnsrud. Foreword by Elizabeth Hardwick.


About the Author
MARY MCCARTHY (1912–1989) was a short-story writer, bestselling novelist, essayist, and critic. She was the author of The Stones of Florence and Birds of America, among other books.

ANNOTATION

Bursting with the vitality both of McCarthy's personality and of her times, this work reveals the autobiographical impulse behind much of her most popular work. It reveals the checkered beginnings of her literary career, including a biting series in the Nation excoriating her fellow critics.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

For all its final aborted promise, this slender sequel to How I Grew (1987), left unfinished at McCarthy's death in 1989, vibrates with the wicked wit and moral astringency that made the author a giant of American belles-lettres. If How I Grew covered the birth of her intellectual consciousness, this volume details the birth of McCarthy's career as a writer—practicing her craft as a twentysomething, Waspish book and theater critic at Partisan Review while accumulating the experience that would nourish her later career and quarrels (including her decisive break with Stalinism and the sequel encounter that inspired "The Man in the Brooks Brothers Suit"). In her fond introduction, friend Elizabeth Hardwick traces McCarthy's tactile re-creation of time, place, and character to her "somewhat obsessional concern for the integrity of sheer fact in matters both trivial and striking." The result, when combined with her familiar mockery of phonies and poseurs, is explosive laughter. Witness incidents about Corliss Lamont, a "pawky freckled swain" who unsuccessfully attempted to seduce her; and about a rival for her first husband's affections, "a yellow-eyed lynxlike blonde given to stretching herself like the cats she fancied." Equally incapable of lying about herself—"self-deception always chilled me"—McCarthy recounts how she wrote a politically correct review for fellow-traveler Malcolm Cowley at The New Republic, drunkenly sat on Max Eastman's lap at a party, and slept with three different men within 24 hours. Most of all, she ruefully recalls how badly she hurt her lover, Partisan Review editor Philip Rahv, by embarking on an affair with, and later disastrous marriage to,Edmund Wilson. A small gem, viewing an era of deep political and personal engagement with no tears and a brave heart.