SOURCE: "Stories Told in Cold Fury and Disciplined Hatred," in New York Herald Tribune Book Review, September 24, 1950, p. 8.

In the following favorable review of Cast a Cold Eye, Pruette judges McCarthy's writing style well suited to her harsh stories.

Whatever Mary McCarthy writes has its own authenticity. Her veritable signature lies squarely across each of these stories as it did upon The Company She Keeps and The Oasis. Several of the stories [in Cast a Cold Eye] are unforgettable; all are interesting; all have the flavor that one associates with bitter aloes, without quite knowing what that is. They appear to be concerned with incidents on the periphery of existence, footnotes to the daily struggles and complications; yet in the end the reader shudders back from their impact and wonders: Is this, then, the essence, the distilled and acrid essence of man's life?

The title is excellent, for...