Memories Of A Catholic Girlhood

Blending memories and family myths, this book takes us back to the twenties, when the author was orphaned in a world of relations as colourful, potent and mysterious as the Catholic religion. There were her grandmothers: one was a blood-curdling Catholic who combined piousness and pugnacity; the other was Jewish and wore a veil to hide the disastrous effects of a face-lift. There was wicked Uncle Myers who beat her for the good of her soul and Aunt Margaret who laced her orange juice with castor oil and taped her lips at night to prevent unhealthy mouth-breathing.

These were the people, along with the ladies of the Sacred Heart convent school, who helped to inspire Mary McCarthy's devastating sense of the sublime and ridiculous and her witty, novelist's imagination.