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Paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Twelve-year-old Frankie cannot understand why everyone disapproves of her idea of going on her brother's honeymoon.
Twelve-year-old Frankie Adams, longing at once for escape and belonging, takes her role as "member of the wedding" to mean that when her older brother marries she will join the happy couple in their new life together. But Frankie is unlucky in love; her mother is dead, and Frankie narrowly escapes being raped by a drunken soldier during a farewell tour of the town. Worst of all, "member of the wedding" doesn't mean what she thinks. A gorgeous, brief coming-of-age novel.
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| This is not what I thought I was buying |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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I got duped on this one. It's not a reading of the novel, as I'd hoped,
but rather a theatrical reading. I need a refund.
Rus
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| Extraordinary |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I thought this book was beautifully written and told a fascinating story. Frankie is one of the most interesting and unusual young female characters in literature. She throws knives, is moody and mean at times, and has as many bad points as good. What I loved was the depth of her character. You could see that Frankie was a deep-thinker and had become depressed about her limited place in this fragile and scary world.
Her friend (the household cook) Berenice is another fascinating character. The story of her four husbands was particularly moving and her kindness towards Frankie and her little cousin John Henry provided the book with a gentle and wise soul.
Frankly, I am in awe of Carson McCullers. She writes beautifully and her characters are unique and fully-formed. Many parts of the book stand out in terms of excellent description, but the section about the Freak Show and the long evening meal shared by Frankie, Berenice and John Henry near the end of the book still stand out in my mind. McCullers enfuses her novels with a tense and spooky atmosphere that makes them compulsively readable and memorable.
Overall, The Member of the Wedding is highly recommended, as is The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories.
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| Most uninteresting book i have ever read |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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I believe this book to be the most uninteresting book i have ever read. This books plot is missing and if it is ther somewhere its very unorganized. The characters' moods are not conveyed to the readers except for Frankie's. The author describes all of the scenes very well except she doesnt need to because most of them are the same, the kitchen. It's fine that the kitchen is the main backdrop for the story such as the water pump in the miracle worker. But every time you go into the kitchen it's the same why spend and entire page in your novel talking about the same thing you told us 10 pages ago. The only reason i didnt quit after the first 20 pages is because I had to be a critique of a book and i was running out of time to read. I kept thinking it has to get better at some point, but i was wrong it was the most boring book i have ever read.
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| Moving, without Moving |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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In The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers captures the lyricism, melancholy, and wonder that animate the young southern protagonist's mind, and comments sagely on the hardships of maturation. That pivotal time of life when one transits from childhood into adulthood is brought to life in all its despair and disillusionment.
Unfortunately, Frankie is not a terribly likeable character, and the author does little to steer empathy toward her in the action that unfolds in the story.
Like a slow, sultry, summer day in the south, that action is minimal at best. At times the novel seems almost like a still life portrait of a heat wave parked in a valley. Pre-adolescent fantasies about becoming fulfilled by participating in a sibling's wedding ceremony hardly make for edge-of-your-seat reading.
Nevertheless, the author enriches the southern gothic tradition with multidimensional characters who evoke the period with depth and detail. Berenice, who is more likeable than Frankie, inspires and amuses with her diction and her life experience. Had McCullers assigned more plot development instead of making the story almost wholly character-driven, these characterizations could rank with the best in southern fiction.
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| A Disturbingly Entertaining One Day Read |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Carson McCullers twists and wrings every prickled feeling out of her young protagonist into a disturbingly entertaining one-day read. The Member of the Wedding is a slow, detailed painting of only two days in the life of twelve year old Frankie Addams: the miserable, sour August day in Georgia when she hears that her brother is getting married, and the eventful hours she spends roaming her town on the day before the wedding.
McCullers does a compelling job of coaxing the reader into the frustrated, tortured world of Frankie's mind. We mourn with her on the subject of her unfortunate height and hideous crew haircut, which cast her from the petty adolescent society. We alternately resent and pity her pathetic six-year-old cousin John Henry West, and strain with her to win even a fleeting moment of respect from her distant watchmaking father. It is her relationship with Berenice, the family's cook and babysitter, that is the most vivid and human. If not for Berenice's sensible and tart remarks, I would have lost patience with Frankie and the book quickly.
The few complaints I have could not be remedied without taking the unique edge off of the book's message. At times it is difficult to follow Frankie in her delusional dreams of becoming part of her brother's new family. In reality, the book has very little to do with the wedding; it is glossed over in a page or two, the concentration being more on the great expectations and the subsequent downfall. I do wish that there had been more background with the relationship between Frankie and Jarvis (her brother), which would have made her fantasies of running off with him more understandable. As it was, they were very nearly strangers and I was frustrated with Frankie for being so stupid that she thought there was even a possibility of being a part of their post-wedding lives. The title is a bit misleading as well; member of the wedding connotes actually being in the wedding party, and Frankie was merely an observer. There are also incongruities in relation to Frankie's age throughout the book, which may actually serve more to highlight both the child and the teenager in her. For instance, the tantrum she throws when she is not included on the honeymoon seems ridiculously childish, yet she remains composed as she drinks beer in a seedy bar with a drunken soldier. It's too bad the book deals in such delicious subtlety and psychological darkness, or it would be wonderful for readers who are closer to adolescence themselves. As it is, the book is more suited to readers older than sixteen, at least.
All in all, this piece conveyed beautifully many of the painful themes of humanity and the life of a young, freakish girl desperately trying to find her place in the world. A tasty read that you won't be able to put down if you enjoy gnawing on rich, real human themes.
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