360 Staff Pick: A Fortunate Age

Four twenty-something women (and their lone male buddy, good-looking but a loser) navigate careers and relationships in the hippest precincts of New York. But let’s be clear: Smith Rakoff’s novel is not Carrie Bradshaw territory. Instead, it’s an homage, 70 years later, to Mary McCarthy’s satirical novel The Group. The social satire is wicked, Smith Rakoff’s observations sharper than tacks; she registers shifts of inflection and emotion that are nearly imperceptible. But hovering over the novel is the tragic sensibility of Edith Wharton, whose weighing of the costs of our decisions is scrupulous and fearsome.