Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy games Rena Rossner and Kate Forsyth

Rena Rossner and Kate Forsyth

She left her small hometown of Meadowlark

witch trials have been twisted and transformed over the course of history and the lines between witch and witch-hunter blurred

The million-copy bestseller

Anthony Grafton's wonderfully original book discusses the careers of men who somehow managed to be both figures of startling genius and - by some measures - credulous or worse

Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy games Rena Rossner and Kate ForsythBlending memories and family myths, Mary McCarthy takes us back to the 1920s, when she was orphaned into a world of relations as colourful, potent and mysterious as the Catholic religion. There was her Catholic grandmother who combined piousness with pugnacity, and her veiled Jewish grandmother who mourned 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