A glimpse to American society in the 1930s, the narrative is a series of scenes from the post-college lives of a group of women who desperately try not to become their parents. So much potential, but actually a rambling and clinical mess, and the characters were more like mouthpieces for various topics from architecture to birth control than actual people. The following is absolute top tier:

"Her confidence fled as she passed the butter to Harald; only the other night, they had had quite a debate, ending in tears on her part, about margarine vs. butter - margarine, Harald maintained, was just as tasty and nourishing, but the butter interests had conspired to keep the margarine people from coloring their product; he was right, yet she could not bear to have that oily white stuff on her table, even if her reaction to the whiteness was a conditioned reflex based on class prejudice."

McCarthy said in an interview that the story is supposed to be funny, but saying I didn't care about any of it would be a horrific understatement. Clearly our senses of humor don't match. Sure, there's more frank sex than you would expect from a 1960s novel (at least to my knowledge; I haven't read enough from that time period), but the rest is the equivalent of folding laundry. At least with the movie you don't have to suffer through McCarthy's writing. Instead, you get good performances and period fashion.