The Group Free online reading

Lara Feigel's first novel, The Group, is a fiercely intelligent, revealing novel about a group of female friends turning 40.

Who has children and who doesn't? Whose marriages are working, whose aren't and who has embarked on completely different models of sexuality and relationships? Who has managed to fulfil their promise, whose life has foundered and what do they think about it, either way?

The Group takes its cue from Mary McCarthy's frank, absorbing novel about a group of female graduates. The relations between men and women may be different now but, in the age of #MeToo, they're equally fraught.

This is an engrossing portrait of contemporary female life and friendship and a thrillingly intimate and acute take on female character in an age that may or may not have been changed by feminism in its different strands.