The Oasis is Mary McCarthy at her most incisive and mischievous, turning the American hunger for renewal into a razor-edged social comedy.
Set in the years just after World War II, the novel follows a band of intellectuals, artists, and political dreamers who abandon New York City for a dilapidated rural compound they grandly christen “the Oasis.”
Their aim is nothing less than to build a new way of living – purged of capitalism, conformity, and moral compromise – through collective labour, shared ideals, and uncompromising honesty.
What unfolds, however, is not utopia but an exquisitely observed anatomy of human contradiction. As the community struggles with muddy fields, leaking roofs, and endless meetings, old hierarchies quietly reassert themselves. Ideological purity gives way to vanity, rivalries harden into dogma, and personal desires undercut public virtue. McCarthy’s cool, ironic narrator – both participant and skeptic – records how lofty principles collapse under the weight of ego, sexual politics and the stubborn persistence of class and power.
A W&N Essential
Set in the years just after World War II, the novel follows a band of intellectuals, artists, and political dreamers who abandon New York City for a dilapidated rural compound they grandly christen “the Oasis.”
Their aim is nothing less than to build a new way of living – purged of capitalism, conformity, and moral compromise – through collective labour, shared ideals, and uncompromising honesty.
What unfolds, however, is not utopia but an exquisitely observed anatomy of human contradiction. As the community struggles with muddy fields, leaking roofs, and endless meetings, old hierarchies quietly reassert themselves. Ideological purity gives way to vanity, rivalries harden into dogma, and personal desires undercut public virtue. McCarthy’s cool, ironic narrator – both participant and skeptic – records how lofty principles collapse under the weight of ego, sexual politics and the stubborn persistence of class and power.
A W&N Essential
Reviews
Her prose is economical without being austere, witty without extravagance, tense and dramatic in its development from sentence to paragraph, clean as a chime . . . Her intelligence and learning are dazzling
Her most scandalous and critically reviled novel . . . The Oasis is not just a story about personal failings and internecine squabbling - it's also a stark warning about intellectual capture, about what can be lost if you don't approach politics with a healthy dose of skepticism
A wicked satire about a failed utopian community
Her early novels read like moral chess matches where everyone is a pawn . . . A novelette in length, a political satire in tone, The Oasis was also a roman à clef that spoofed the Partisan Review intellectuals
Brilliant and quite original . . . Its deliciously witty sentence structure is rooted in the heartfelt disappointment of a moralist whom the reader feels has really wanted the good (that is, the genuine) in our midst to prevail
A pure delight . . . A veritable little masterpiece
