The Group addresses manners, social codes, and conventions both old and new among a group of Vassar students after their graduation in 1933 (McCarthy's college and year). Against the backdrop of the Depression, an array of urban lifestyles appears in settings from Boston to New York: the political crowd, the theater and art group, and the horsey society types.

Larger social changes are reflected in everyday culture as the friends meet adulthood and the Big Apple. In domestic life and contemporary manners, cocktails and progressive ideas are the norm, as well as casseroles rather than meat-and-potatoes, apartments rather than parlors. One does one's own cooking, and husbands even share shopping and chopping with their wives. Everyone is struggling professionally — as an actor or writer, in the professions or business. The darker side of the economic picture is not missing — unemployment, families newly fallen into the...