'A very funny and brilliant book. Feigel does a thorough and virtuosic job of describing the dilemmas of contemporary middle-class women' Rachel Cusk

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

About the Author
A writer, critic and cultural historian teaching in the English department at King's College London, Lara Feigel is the author of four books including The Love-Charm of Bombs, The Bitter Taste of Victory and, most recently, Free Woman, a book where Lara examines her own life alongside Doris Lessing's to explore what freedom (sexual, psychological, political) might be and whether it's attainable or desirable. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, writes regularly for the Guardian and lives in Kensal Rise, London, with her two children. The Group is her first novel.

Reviews
A very funny and brilliant book. Feigel does a thorough and virtuosic job of describing the dilemmas of contemporary middle-class women -- Rachel Cusk
An elegant, vivid, fascinating novel, with a profound vision of these lives and this moment in our culture. Pure pleasure * Tessa Hadley *
The mix of caustic insights and sudden tenderness make the group dynamics arrestingly real. I can't remember the last time I consumed a novel so hungrily * Guardian *
The Group works because there is nothing self-satisfied in its tone . . . The mix of caustic insights and sudden tenderness make the group dynamics arrestingly real * Observer *
Feigel shows all this to attentive readers in a novel playing with its own fictitiousness a clear statement of the novel's timely and clever investigation of otherness and sameness * Guardian Review *
Thought-provoking . . . with flashes of brilliant perception * Daily Telegraph *
A clever, modern book * The Times *
The humour is sharply observed, drily delivered and laced with ruefulness. While Feigel articulates her characters' fears with sensitivity, she also illustrates their lack of self-awareness and limits of experience with angry frustration that makes for a claustrophobic, often deeply uncomfortable and sometimes agonising picture * Financial Times *
Crisp and clever * TLS *



Book Information
ISBN 9781529305005
Author Lara Feigel
Format Hardback
Page Count 336
Imprint JM Originals
Publisher John Murray Press
Weight(grams) 540g
Dimensions(mm) 214mm * 134mm * 32mm