McCarthy's List

by Mary Mackey

Written in the “first person insane,” McCarthy’s List is zany, hilarious, irreverent contemplation of the madness of American culture. Rinda Sue McCarthy, born at the precise moment the atomic bomb burst over Hiroshima, sits in a Mexican jail awaiting execution by firing squad. As the Mexican soldiers practice their marksmanship outside her cell, she writes her confession: a tale of the crimes committed against her by the leaders of a Conspiracy She Is Not At Liberty To Name, and her murderous, but utterly apt revenge. Who are They? Old boyfriends, professors, doctors, her former husband--all of whom have sexually abused her, intellectually trivialized her, performed unnecessary operations on her, and committed her to a mental hospital against her will, not to mention condemned her to death. Is Rinda Sue a paranoid schizophrenic driven mad by growing up in Indianapolis in an era when Joe McCarthy (no relation) was frightening America with his vision of a great, secret communist conspiracy? Or is her behavior the only sane response to an insane world? Either way, Mackey has written a brilliant, dark comedy, witty, misanthropic, and entirely hilarious.

199 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

"New York Times" bestselling author Mary Mackey's published works include 13 novels, and 7 books of poetry including "Sugar Zone" which won the 2012 PEN Oakland Award for Literary Excellence. They have sold over a million and a half copies and been translated into twelve foreign languages including Japanese, Hebrew, and Finnish.

Mary is related through her father's family to Mark Twain. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. During the early 1970s she lived in the rain forests of Costa Rica. For the last twenty-five years, she has been traveling to Brazil with her husband Angus Wright. The rainforests of the Amazon and the people of Brazil have been a major influence on two of her collections of poetry, "Sugar Zone" and "Travelers With No Ticket Home", and on two of her novels: "The Widow's War," and "The Village of Bones," which is a prequel to her bestselling Earthsong Serious about Prehistoric Europe.

From 1989 to 1992 she served as Chair of PEN American Center, West. Currently, she is Emeritus Professor of English at California State University, Sacramento.

While her poetry has mainly centered around the traditional lyric themes of love, death, and nature, her novels have ranged from the Midwestern United States to the Goddess-worshiping cultures of Neolithic Europe. A screenwriter as well as a novelist, she has sold feature scripts to Warner Brothers as well as to various independent film companies.

Mary has lectured at many places including Harvard and the Smithsonian. Additionally, she has contributed to such diverse print and on-line publications as The Chiron Review, Redbook, and Salon. She occasionally writes comedy under the pen name "Kate Clemens".

Her popular "People Who Make Books Happen" interview series can be found on her Blog http://marymackey.com/the-writers-jou.... A free resource for writers and readers, it contains interviews with experts on various topics including "How To Get An Agent," and "Helping Independent Bookstores Survive and Thrive." You are invited to ask Mary questions about these interviews and other topics by going to the Goodreads "Ask The Author" section of this profile page or by visiting her website at http://marymackey.com/.

The photograph of Mary Mackey was taken by Irene Young.