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The Member of the Wedding

3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 · rating details · 5,798 ratings · 460 reviews

The novel that became an award-winning play and a major motion picture and that has charmed generations of readers, Carson McCullers’s classic The Member of the Wedding is now available in small- format trade paperback for the ﬁrst time. Here is the story of the inimitable twelve-year-old Frankie, who is utterly, hopelessly bored with life until she hears about...more

Paperback, 163 pages

Published August 13th 2004 by Mariner Books (first published 1946)

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Jan 03, 2011 Mariel rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Return to Send Her

Recommended to Mariel by: Loyd, I'm ready to be heartbroken

Carson McCuller's The Member of the Wedding is my unrequited love story in my stable of hos: those lyrically intimate classical works I've read that stayed with me because they were confiders of sorts, someones I could go to and find some sort of explanation inside, a relating that was more than good enough of itself. (And I get my belt when they don't put out for me.) (I don't wanna say cathartic because this book isn't like that. It's often uncomfortably painful in the don't-wanna-be-reminded-...more Carson McCuller's The Member of the Wedding is my unrequited love story in my stable of hos: those lyrically intimate classical works I've read that stayed with me because they were confiders of sorts, someones I could go to and find some sort of explanation inside, a relating that was more than good enough of itself. (And I get my belt when they don't put out for me.) (I don't wanna say cathartic because this book isn't like that. It's often uncomfortably painful in the don't-wanna-be-reminded-of-that-wasn't-I-reading-to-forget-that-in-the-first-place way.) I collected them, books like Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, and held them in reserve when it got to be too much. A lot of my frames of reference in experience are heavily tied into these stories. Yeah, I was angsty at times (coughs). I'm really still doing that confusion thing (ahem), and what I read tomorrow could end up sticking with me for the rest of my days. Still, I've yet to read anything else that quite stands out to me as much when I think about unrequited love. Not the love you can sustain on your own, but the emptiness inside that needs another half to become whole. Frankie is worried about herself because there's that part missing she doesn't even know how to fill. Young Frankie is the girl throwing all of her hopes onto one thing, although the chance of it working out well are none (why would her brother and his new wife take her with them after their wedding? Doesn't she know only babies and cute puppies get adopted? Doesn't matter, it could stand in for any impossible dream). I could relate to that feeling of constantly doing the wrong thing, constantly looking in the wrong places. I can't forget about her desperation. It wasn't do what you gotta do bravery, but last chances sickness. I love Carson McCullers for capturing so well that raw feeling of clinging to make believe. The especially hard times when the weight of it becomes too much. The moments in life when the usual getting by is no longer enough... I read this for the first time when I was fourteen and then again in 2007. Both times it provoked strong feelings in me.
P.s. I heart Bernice. I'd have loved to have had those kitchen conversations with her. Because of her this is not a useless feel-bad book but a helps over the rough times book. Like a great conversation when all you'd had was droning voices.

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Jan 12, 2010 Melody rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: southern-lit, ww-ii, bookgroup

Carson McCullers was an author who used her writing to search for God and to explore her own questions about sexual identity. In The Member of the Wedding her main character, who is called Frankie, turns 12 and begins to try to figure out how she is going to navigate her way around this big old lonely world. Will she do it with a “crew-cut”, wearing a Mexican hat and with “rusty elbows”, or will she seek adventure in exotic places with “Esquimaux” by train in silver slippers with her hair in cur...more Carson McCullers was an author who used her writing to search for God and to explore her own questions about sexual identity. In The Member of the Wedding her main character, who is called Frankie, turns 12 and begins to try to figure out how she is going to navigate her way around this big old lonely world. Will she do it with a “crew-cut”, wearing a Mexican hat and with “rusty elbows”, or will she seek adventure in exotic places with “Esquimaux” by train in silver slippers with her hair in curls going by the name of F. Jasmine on the arm of a soldier? Frankie does not belong to any “we”. The neighborhood girls won’t let her join their club and the only people she ever talks with are her housekeeper Bernice and her distant cousin, John Henry; John Henry who follows F. Jasmine around the town wearing her jonquil dress, one of the “costumes” that Frankie has given to him.

McCullers’ Southern Gothic novel is a coming of age story – but this is the coming of age story of a misfit who throws knifes at her housekeeper, steals knives from the local Sears and Roebuck Store and also steals her father’s pistol and shoots up all the cartridges in a vacant lot. She is growing up in the time of WWII, never knowing her mother who died the day Frankie was born. She is being raised by her tired, widowed father and Bernice, their black housekeeper who dreams of a world where there is “no separate colored people in the world, but all human beings (are) light brown color with blue eyes and black hair. There would be no colored people and no white people to make the colored people feel cheap and sorry all through their lives. No colored people, but all human men and ladies and children as one loving family on the earth.” Bernice also dreams of finding a new man who makes her "shiver."

Frankie is on the brink of sexual and emotional discovery – and the rest of the world is also struggling with racial conflict and the horrors and disruption of war.
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Jun 11, 2013 Diane rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, gorgeous-prose

I was drawn to this story of 12-year-old Frankie, who is restless and fearful and jealous of anyone who is happy, because she is such a jumble of adolescent angst.

"This was the summer when Frankie was sick and tired of being Frankie. She hated herself, and had become a loafer and a big no-good who hung around the summer kitchen ... The war and the world were too fast and big and strange. To think about the world for very long made her afraid. She was not afraid of Germans or bombs or Japanese....more

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Dec 18, 2007 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Enjoyed:
--WWII time period
--Berenice, the black housekeeper who is a storyteller and surrogate mother to the adolescent protagonist
--Descriptions of Southern food (eaten in kitchen, where much of the action transpires)
--The threesome of the adult female black housekeeper, the adolescent girl, and the six-year-old boy cousin, as a group
--brevity of book

Warmed up to:
--Slow pace of book, which was more difficult in the early part of the book
--Southern milieu (which can be good or bad -- depends on...more

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Jul 02, 2012 Dominic rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classic-literature

The Member of the Wedding continues in the tradition of Carson McCullers' breakthrough novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, a book that I can't seem to shake out of my system (and love more every time I think about it). In this short novel, Frankie/F. Jasmine/Frances is another McCullers misfit, this time a pre-adolescent girl whose dreams are too big for her small town and her small world.

While the plot isn't extraordinarily complex (basically it's the story of one lazy summer when Frankie drea...more

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Jun 10, 2008 Cecily rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites, miscellaneous-fiction, american-canadian

Lonely motherless tomboy confronting sudden adolescence, prompted by her older brother's wedding. Some similarities with "To Kill a Mocking Bird" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) - in terms of character, situation, location etc. Very evocative re hot Southern summer etc.

McCullers has a very consistent voice, and yet somehow her books are distinct from each other. In particular, lyrical and more literal musical aspects to much of her writing (reflecting the fact she very nearly became a...more

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Dec 29, 2007 Rebecca rated it 5 of 5 stars

Such a vivid, cruel when necessary, and yet unhysterical account of a 12 & 5/6th year old girl. She's filled with intense emotions that she doesn't have names for, eagerness, desperation. This is a book that describes how it feels to be this person--how it feels to be a smart girl somewhere in the mush between kid and adult, engaging in adult ideas but with a child's facility. McCullers is brave, she doesn't shy away from the horror of being alive, and yet never loses her warmth.

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May 03, 2012 Terry rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was mesmerized by this book. I listened to it during dog walks and a drive to a family reunion. I was worried I wouldn't be able to really grasp the language and syntax (things I'm crazy about). Let alone the story. But Susan Sarandon read it to me, and I loved every dripping moment, and there were many moments I listened to again and again. I don't even know where to begin to say what I admire about this book. It's brilliant. Knocked my socks off. McCullers captures life in a small southern t...more

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Jul 13, 2012 Ian rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My father had a large collection of Penguin paperbacks which he had ordered direct from the publisher back in the mid 1960s. I'd always fancied reading a number of them, but always had far too many books of my own to read. I still have far too many books of my own to read, but my mother didn't see any point in hanging onto my Dad's Penguin's any more, so I picked out the ones I wanted and have been bringing them home in installments. I knew nothing of McCullers, only that she was female and cons...more

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May 11, 2009 Maralise rated it 5 of 5 stars

A fantastic explication of what 'crazy' feels like. McCullers nails loneliness. Again.

For me, even more than in 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,' the characters reveal their skeletons in a way that doesn't separate you from their pain, but instead forces you to stare in gawky horror at the similarities between yourself and them.

And yet, McCullers also manages to allow the reader to hope, to think of the future, to imagine a world where wounds are healed and scars start to scab over and fade away....more

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Aug 18, 2007 Shawna rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am more partial to this book more than The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (another book by McCullers). There is one main character you are concerned about and they story is simple, despite this the characters had depth and I was able to relate and ponder on human nature. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter had many interweaving storylines and though I was given a dizzying high from contemplating the great social problems plaguing the last century I prefer focusing on the individual and the how’s and why’s...more

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Jan 25, 2009 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. So this book was our selection for my most recent book club meeting. We were pretty evenly split over whether or not we liked it. (I liked it.) We all agreed that it was an amazing portrait of a pre-teen girl caught up in her own misery. Not all of us agreed that it made good literature to read that much from the viewpoint of a pre-teen girl caught up in her own misery. I couldn’t believe how fully realized those few days were in Frankie/F. Jasmine/Francis’s life. I believed every word. I believ...more So this book was our selection for my most recent book club meeting. We were pretty evenly split over whether or not we liked it. (I liked it.) We all agreed that it was an amazing portrait of a pre-teen girl caught up in her own misery. Not all of us agreed that it made good literature to read that much from the viewpoint of a pre-teen girl caught up in her own misery. I couldn’t believe how fully realized those few days were in Frankie/F. Jasmine/Francis’s life. I believed every word. I believed every reaction–to her and by her–and it was fascinating to watch. This, Gentle Readers, is reality TV how it ought to be done.

The general themes of the book–loneliness, coming of age, family–are sort of obvious. I don’t really feel like harping on them now. Frankie was a typical frustrated pre-teen, but she was smart. She lost control of her emotions, I think, but she was definitely a sensitive person. She understood, however much she didn’t like it, why the big girls excluded her from their games (although she was incredibly sexually naive, beyond the typical twelve-year-old, I think). I think she was still angry and hurt that her father kicked her out of her bed, and didn’t really get that she was growing up. For all that he’s a widower, I don’t think her father was doing anything weird. I also don’t think that her sleeping with John Henry was anything weird, either. She was just so lonely. Her panic at what happened in the barn with that boy (I think it was a case of I’ll show you mine–I don’t think they did anything, well, penetrative) illuminates her naivete. She absolutely does not make the connection between what she did with him and what she has done in bed with her male relatives. What I think is interesting is how this sexual alertness lurks just beneath her interest in going out on a date with that soldier. She isn’t facing up to it–but of course that would have knocked her out of her father’s bed sooner. I feel a thesis coming on, but I can’t get it together. OK. She is deliberately sexually naive in order to remain as close to her father and cousin as long as possible, having no mother and having a father who is very busy and having a brother out of the house and having a nursemaid (Berenice is basically her nursemaid) with a social life of her own. Her disgust and fright about her sexual game with her peer is because it brings her to the brink of acknowledging that she will have to separate herself forever from her male relatives.

I’m putting that train of thought on the siding before it crashes into the barn.

So she’s also very sensitive to the real problems that people have, especially the problems the black people she knows have. She feels marginalized herself, so it’s no wonder that she can understand why other people feel marginalized (even before Berenice outright says so), but I was impressed by the kinds of ideas she had. Honey (was he Berenice’s brother? I can’t remember) in particular. It was probably unbelievably offensive for a white girl to suggest to a black man that he solve all his problems by passing for white, but he did have the right attributes to make a new identity for himself. It’s what Frankie wanted to do. It was a legitimate, sincere suggestion, and considering her age and her level of worldliness, I think it was a very mature response. I know passing is not something you would just decide you are going to do, and it probably was for many people who passed the same as passing from life to the friends and family left behind, but there is something to be said for a fresh start when you’ve had a life of people deciding they already know everything about you. I thought the conversation about gender and heaven was very interesting too, as well as the characterization of the people in the book pushing back against gender expectations. Was it Lily Mae who adopted completely the identity of female? It was in one of Berenice’s stories. There was explanation regarding this person, but no judgment. None. It’s just what Lily Mae had to do. John Henry dresses up in Frankie’s outfits and wanders around town. No one bats an eye (true, he is just a little boy). Frankie slips readily between organdy dresses and crew cut and tank tops, and that’s just something that Frankie does. I’m not sure if these aspects of the character and the narrative voice (in that there’s no judgment about the gender flexibility) reflect more about the author or the time period. Perhaps the mid-Twentieth Century Small Southern Town was far more tolerant of deviation than we like to think today. Of course, in small towns, everyone knows you as a person first. You’re all already individuals. The degree to which your quirks are tolerated probably comes down to matters of personality rather than social dicta.

Frankie’s fantasy about the wedding was almost insignificant to the book. Should she have known better that it was a crazy idea and that her brother and his wife were never going to take her into their home? Maybe. Probably. She probably knew, but was letting the dream take her as far as it could. She really only spent a week or less on the dream–perfectly normal for a girl her age. I’ve had sillier fantasies that entertained me for much longer.

Speaking of silly fantasies… you know what was really cool? Having Frankie completely dubious of the vague and open-ended “predictions” she heard at Psychic Grandma’s. The littlest Southern Gothic Skeptic does well.

The coda of the book–after the wedding, when time has passed and she’s back in school–is something I haven’t fully figured out yet. The doorbell that interrupts her exhilarated state of mind was probably her new girlfriend coming for a visit. She’s so glad to have a peer in real life again that having a guest easily trumps news about her brother, especially if she was sharing it with someone who already likely knew it. It’s the John Henry sudden death part that I don’t understand. It’s realism, OK. It’s shocking and awful, and a horrible death for that character (for anyone, of course), and I’m not sure what the author is trying to say. Surely it’s more than the fickle hand of fate. He gets sick the same time that Honey is convicted or arrested (I don’t have the book to check facts here), and Berenice takes responsibility for everything. It’s interesting that her response is to marry the slow and steady TT–I don’t know if that’s a sign of self-loathing or clear thinking. She’s been waiting an awful long time for true passionate love again, but she keeps getting bad men when she tries to replace her first husband. Maybe she’s rewarding herself. Hard to say, juxtaposed as it is against tragedy. I don’t think John Henry is being punished for having gender ambiguity thoughts, and I don’t think he needed to die for Frankie/Frances to move on to her next phase of life. Maybe it really just is to remind people that life is short and hard. Maybe it reminded Berenice that life is short and hard, and to be happy when you can. Perhaps Frances–intelligent, sensitive Frances–took that lesson, too, even if she isn’t shown reflecting on it in the last few pages of the book.

I knew in advance (I think from an Amazon review) that John Henry was going to die, but I didn’t expect meningitis. There’s this scene towards the beginning of the book where Frankie is crabby and flinging knives around the house. Berenice says that one of these days someone is going to surprise Frankie by coming around a corner, and the implications are sort of left hanging. I honestly expected John Henry to get a knife in the chest or something. It’s like that rule about showing a gun in Act I and making sure it goes off by Act III (or whatever act). But nothing was ever made of the knives. It’s probably not an author oversight. This is where I will let my Gentle Student Readers go looking for the relevance of knife flinging to the other elements of the book.

I will wonder about the significance of the name John Henry, too. I know at least the rudiments of the John Henry story, but I’m not sure how it might fit into this novel. That could be a coincidence. He is the least like a steel driving man of all the men I have ever read stories about.(less)

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Gill Hi Karen, Finished reading this book and it is all packed up to go off to my d-i-l in GA where they are this year, but I wish it weren't packed as I f...more Hi Karen, Finished reading this book and it is all packed up to go off to my d-i-l in GA where they are this year, but I wish it weren't packed as I feel I need to check facts to comment on your review!
First - thank you for the spoiler alert! I am so fed up with people merely writing a plot-precis I never read the reviews until I have finished a book, but it annoys the pants off me when they don't put spoilers and do that!
Secondly I think the knife-throwing, stealing etc. are not deliverate red herings but examples of rebellion against lawyer (?) Dad's sensible adult world by a confused almost-teen.
Third:
" It’s the John Henry sudden death part that I don’t understand. It’s realism, OK. It’s shocking and awful, and a horrible death for that character (for anyone, of course), and I’m not sure what the author is trying to say. Surely it’s more than the fickle hand of fate."
I and my elder son had meningitis, and I had a pupil die of it aged 12. I think here she is using it as a wake-up call for Berenice to stop indulging her search for thrilling men and get on with life with a man she knows is reliable, it also means she has regarded Frankie's advice as mature and worth consideration. That is the other 'point' of JH's 'pointless' death surely, that it marks Frankie's leaving childhood and chilish things and passing into teenage crushes and friendships and looking to older people for friendship rather than her six-year-old cousin?
Third: being only a decade younger than Frankie I can say truthfully that we were just as sexually naive and muddled at 12. Hell I remember 12 distinctly as I finished my growth spurt at 5'9 and 3/4" and head and shoulders above most of my peers but still able naively to suggest to my sister that a word written on the subway wall would be a good name for our cat because she had been a she and was now neutered, an it! Sister at nearly 14 was shocked and said the equivalent of the US "Now hush your mouth"!
I certainly wished to be male and wore jeans and men's shirts. I couldn't get girls' clothes to fit my height, or women's to fir my skinniness. For concerts I had a party dress my mother had made, I suspect Frankie's dress was similarly 'for best', and is so described. As for sleeping two to a bed, it was the norm, often top-to-tailed. When my Granny moved in with us, three of us shared two beds on a rota! I didn't have a brother, but the boys next door would dress up in dresses and high heels from the dressing up chest whilst my sister and I wore breeches or battle dress!
Sorry to waffle on. I loved this book, and only gave it away because all my books about Georgia go to said d-i-l! Brilliant writing, and sadly reflective of McCullers' own loneliness. I'm enjoying Bailey White now!(less)
Mar 25, 2010 01:26am

Jan 24, 2013 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: carson-mccullers

I have mixed emotions about it this book.

I read this novel as the 4th novel of the "McCuller's Complete Novels"edition of The Library of America.

The great Carson, as always wields her pen with great skill and fluidity mixing red dixie land soil with deep dark delta blues, conjuring up another deeply humanistic sacrificial soul to be unceremoniously dumped deep behind the enemy lines of the south, to let them fend for themselves in small towns that have plenty of "hurt" for just for them.

But i...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Amber rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: college, contemporary, identity

The Member of the Wedding is a character driven novel centred around 12 year old Frankie Addams. It follows the development of Frankie’s naïve often absurd adolescent mind as she fantasises about her brother’s upcoming wedding. It is this wedding which appears to hold Frankie’s fragile psyche together. She immerses herself in its preparations in an effort to run from the fact that she does not feel as if she belong anywhere. She takes the adolescent cliché of, “Nobody understands me” to new, oft...more

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Oct 26, 2012 Bap rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, southern-literature

This book is extremely well written. Reminds me of to kill a mockingbird and Truman Copote. It would be wrong to view this as a coming of age story although the main character Frankie or Francine is certainly at the cusp of becoming an adolescent. There are three main characters Frankie, who is 12, her cousinJohn Henry West who is six, and the Black maid/caretaker Berenice Sadie Brown. The story takes place over several days in August as Frankie seizes upon the wedding of her brother , a GI, hom...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I re-read MEMBER OF WEDDING recently because an English-teaching friend of mine (Gloria) and I are planning for the next high school session.

As I did so many years ago, but now for different reasons, I strongly recommend MEMBER OF THE WEDDING because Carson McCullers truly understands teenagers. In this novel the protagonist is 12 years old, lives in a small town where nothing happens -- and remember, this is set... somewhere around 1930... (?) ... before Facebook, before television, before free...more

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May 07, 2012 Blue rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I keep saying this, but then I keep not following my own advice: I have to stop reading books about annoying teenagers. So Frankie, the main character, was annoying, though her troubles and her lack of ability to name her affliction is certainly one that I could understand and somewhat relate to.

McCullers really captures the unending, slow, suffocating summer in the South, where there isn't much to do but to sit around and play cards in the kitchen and talk about the same things over and over a...more

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Feb 06, 2012 Tara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Astonishing look at a few days in the life of a bored, lonely teenage girl in the Deep South of the 1930s. McCullers's writing is so intensely detailed that sometimes the pace drops, but it's all worth it.

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May 29, 2011 Thing Two rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Thing Two by: Susan Roby

Shelves: books-you-might-have-missed

An achingly sad coming-of-age story about 12-year-old F. Jasmine Addams who just wants to belong. Her mother died when she was born, her best friend has moved away, and now her brother is getting married and moving, too. Her only friend in the world is her six-year-old cousin John Henry. She convinces herself that being a member of the wedding means her brother and new sister-in-law will take her away. She feels caught in her dull life and yearns to escape.

Midway through this short book, her ho...more

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Oct 14, 2010 Kelsey rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I just finished reading the novel The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. The novel is about a twelve year old girl trying to find where she belongs. It is set in the South in the year 1944. Her brother, Jarvis, is getting married in Winter Hill. The protagonist Frankie wants to go with him and the new bride, Janice, wherever they go. She daydreams during her summer days about the places she will go and the people she will meet. When her brother comes to visit with his fiancé, Frankie rea...more I just finished reading the novel The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. The novel is about a twelve year old girl trying to find where she belongs. It is set in the South in the year 1944. Her brother, Jarvis, is getting married in Winter Hill. The protagonist Frankie wants to go with him and the new bride, Janice, wherever they go. She daydreams during her summer days about the places she will go and the people she will meet. When her brother comes to visit with his fiancé, Frankie realizes she doesn’t belong to any group. This makes Frankie revaluate her actions and change the ways she acts, talks, and thinks. To help her become a new person she changes her name from boring old Frankie to a new more sophisticated F. Jasmine. The reason she chooses F. jasmine is so she could have a name that starts with JA just like her brother and his bride. She tries to be more grown up and goes around town talking to random people about how she is going to Winter Hill for the wedding and she is not coming back when it is over. Nobody really pays much attention to her but one person. This person is a red haired soldier. She meets him on the streets and they talk and end up going to the local bar together called Blue Moon. At Blue Moon the soldier decides he wants to have a date with F. Jasmine later that night around nine o’clock. F. Jasmine goes home and has a long talk with her housekeeper Bernice. After the talk she goes to the date. After the date the soldier is drunk and has the wrong intentions, but naive F. Jasmine didn’t realize this. F. Jasmine ends up bashing him in the head and running back home. Shortly after this incident she changes her name to Frances and they go to Winter Hill for the wedding. At the Wedding everyone including her brother, who she thinks is going to take her to travel the world, pays no attention to her and treats her as a kid. This makes her very angry. When they arrive home from the wedding she runs away from home and then tries to commit suicide. The cops end up catching her and taking her back to her dad. Within the next three months she meets a girl and they become best friends.
My least favorite part of the book was Part One. This is when Frankie is discovering who she is. Even though it sets up the novel, it is very hard to get into. The author takes a lot of time explaining unnecessary details. When the author talks about the protagonist she doesn’t give you enough information to fully understand Frankie. It is also hard to keep up with who she is talking about because she changes the protagonists name three different times in the novel. This is not a book I would pick up and read again.
My favorite part of the book was towards the ending. This is during the time Frances turns thirteen and makes a friend. She meets a girl named Mary Littlejohn. Mary is two years older than she is. They go to the carnival together and hang out. This gives Frances a sense of belonging.
I would recommend this novel for high school students who need to find a sense of belonging. It would show them that running away and trying to commit suicide is not the answer to their problems. It would also explain to them that everything will get better sooner or later.
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Mar 05, 2010 Emma rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Reader Response; The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers: Jan. 19, 2010
The Member of the Wedding is a novel about a young, twelve year old girl named Frankie. Frankie, being at the awkward stage in life of adolescence, is completely bored with her life in her tiny, southern town, that is until she hears of her older brother’s upcoming wedding. She soon realizes that she has become infatuated with the idea of the wedding, and with the soon to be married couple. She makes intricate plans a...more Reader Response; The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers: Jan. 19, 2010
The Member of the Wedding is a novel about a young, twelve year old girl named Frankie. Frankie, being at the awkward stage in life of adolescence, is completely bored with her life in her tiny, southern town, that is until she hears of her older brother’s upcoming wedding. She soon realizes that she has become infatuated with the idea of the wedding, and with the soon to be married couple. She makes intricate plans as to where she hopes to travel with her brother and his bride on their honeymoon, and she intends to spend her entire life with them. Her obsession with this dream leads her to share it with anyone who will listen to her. Of course, her family maid and her younger cousin find her ridiculous, but nevertheless, she is persistent, and she insists that they’ll take her. Frankie’s imaginary, and quite hypothetical story takes her a breath away from danger, and a step away from hysteria. Her determination and willfulness are a true display of what it means to be an adolescent.
Frankie in truth is just a lonely girl. Many people get like that when they’re going through adolescence. I think it’s all those raging hormones. I mean she feels like nobody wants her in their life, and she is struggling to figure out her own identity. That is why she makes up this outrageous dream, that she probably knows is improbable to come true, yet she hangs onto it, because she feels like it will hopefully take the place of her loneliness. That is also probably why she goes off with the drunkard. Her naiveté doesn’t register that he might be dangerous, but because she is a lonely young girl, and she doesn’t expect anything bad to happen she goes with him. And risks everything. She almost loses her innocence as a consequence for her naiveté and of her loneliness.
Another reason why I love this book so much is because Frankie reminds me of myself, and my peers. Her headstrong personality displays a level of determination that only a stubborn teen could accomplish. She believes in her opinions so strongly that she doesn’t realize that she might be wrong. Frankie reminds me of myself in this way because sometimes I lack common sense, and she has almost no common sense, but that’s possibly because she is ignorant and is just not educated in the ways of being streetwise.
Some themes I recognized in this book are the themes of innocence, loneliness, love, friendship, death, maturity, responsibility, strength, ignorance, and finally, understanding. These are all important themes when it comes to growing up and maturing. Frankie is the symbol of youth, and of all adolescents and their struggle to learn who they are, and to become adults.

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Jan 10, 2010 Barb rated it 4 of 5 stars

the 4 star rating is for the brilliant way this book is written, for it being a superb character study - not for how fun it was to read. parts of it should be required reading for middle schoolers, esp those students who feel so different from others and out of place in their world - then to tell those tweeners that this was written in 1946!

examples: frankie goes to the side show at a carnival; "she was afraid of all the Freaks, for it seemed to her that they had looked at her in a secret way a...more

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Aug 01, 2009 Sandra rated it 4 of 5 stars

This coming of age story was dark, funny, sad, a really great read. McCullers takes her time to tell the story of Frankie, a twelve year old girl who knows how to handle a pistol and throw knives. She's pissed off, but she doesn't know why. She becomes obsessed with her brother's wedding, and tells everyone that she is not coming back to town after the wedding, that she plans on leaving with the couple to their honeymoon.

The novella is told in three parts, the longest of which is one day. Much...more This coming of age story was dark, funny, sad, a really great read. McCullers takes her time to tell the story of Frankie, a twelve year old girl who knows how to handle a pistol and throw knives. She's pissed off, but she doesn't know why. She becomes obsessed with her brother's wedding, and tells everyone that she is not coming back to town after the wedding, that she plans on leaving with the couple to their honeymoon.

The novella is told in three parts, the longest of which is one day. Much of it takes place around the kitchen table, in the form of conversation between Frankie, the black cook, Berenice, and Frankie's little cousin, John Henry. The three characters form a wonderful triangle of emotion, with Frankie being the strongest and balanced by Berenice's wise words and often hysterical cracks at Frankie. For example, Frankie hounds Berenice about whether she is a freak because she is tall. Berenice says no, but Frankie keeps pestering.

Berenice says, "I think when you fill out you will do very well. If you behave."
"But by Sunday," Frankie said. "I want to do something to improve myself before the wedding."
"Get clean for a change. Scrub your elbows and fix yourself nice. You will do very well."

Frankie looked for a last time at herself in the mirror, and then she turned away. She thought about her brother and the bride, and there was a tightness in her that would not break.

"I don't know what to do. I just wish I would die."
"Well die then!' said Berenice"

John Henry rounds out the three with his five year old antics. He is the grounding factor in the story because he's wise beyond his years, and we get to see just how crazy Frankie is by the way he acts around her.

McCuller's descriptions are sharp and interesting, and mirrors Frankie's malaise. She does such a great job of showing who Frankie is that for a moment we do believe that Frankie could shoot herself with her father's pistol if she decides.

McCullers takes her time with scenes and you get the feeling that she's not in a hurry to move you through the story, which creates a lot of the tension. Details, details, details. A reminder to slow down, take your time, really feel it.

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Jul 21, 2009 Adele rated it 4 of 5 stars

Before picking up The Member of the Wedding, I'd only read one other work of McCullers-- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. While the latter is the best title (ever) The Member of the Wedding is a better story to my mind. Frankie is a character I easily recognized and have identified with since I started reading: a twelve year old girl in a hurry to grow up. Frankie is a motherless tomboy, brave, reckless, and harboring delusions of her own grandeur. When she finds out her brother's getting married,...more

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May 01, 2013 Jacki rated it 5 of 5 stars

The book The Member of the Wedding was a fantastic story! It all begins with this girl named Frankie, 12 years old who is curious about the adult life. After she was kicked out of a club her friend had made, Frankie starts to develop a plan that she will run away with her brother and his fiancé after they are married. Then she goes out to a bar where she meets a red-headed man who buys her a drink and asks if she would meet him later. When she agrees and meets him again later that evening, Frank...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Veronica rated it 4 of 5 stars

McCullers captures tween angst with clarity and delivers it without asking for sympathy, but perhaps hoping for understanding. The Member of the Wedding seems a simple tale of a young girl anticipating the wedding of her brother, but it is much more and delivers it in that slow southern style with the occasional closed fist banging on a table to jar you into awareness.

Like the sense of hearing in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, this time McCullers symbol was the sense of sight; Berenice’s glass ey...more McCullers captures tween angst with clarity and delivers it without asking for sympathy, but perhaps hoping for understanding. The Member of the Wedding seems a simple tale of a young girl anticipating the wedding of her brother, but it is much more and delivers it in that slow southern style with the occasional closed fist banging on a table to jar you into awareness.

Like the sense of hearing in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, this time McCullers symbol was the sense of sight; Berenice’s glass eye, John Henry’s glasses, and Mr. Addams’ loupe. Clearly, most are blind when it comes to self-awareness.

Frankie Addams is a 12-year-old girl who is beginning to see life in a different way. She is self-absorbed and temperamental and lacks compassion for others. As she prepares for her brother’s upcoming wedding, she believes he will take her to lieve with him and his bride, allowing her to leave her home without a care. She is the young girl whose agonies are easily related to.

The Addams housekeeper, Berenice Sadie Brown is a woman whose wisdom is wasted on young Frankie. She seems to understand the troubles of youth, but draws the line at extreme behavior. She is the marrying kind as she’s wed four times, but can’t seem to recreate the first that left her a widow. Her eye is gouged out by another abusive husband leaving her with one glass eye, but she continues to consider marrying again. Keen to racial inequality and aware of the effects of the war, she sees more with one eye than most do with two.

Sweet John Henry West is Frankie’s six-year-old cousin. He is subjected to indifference by his cousin and seems not to be taken too seriously. I would say he was an underdeveloped character, but I believe that was intentional so as not to get the reader too enamored of someone who would break your heart in the end.

I would love to roam down a main street with Ms. McCullers and stop in a cafe where we would chat about inane things, such as the weather and build up to a deeper level and discuss how she managed to create great works through such personal struggles.

My rating for The Member of the Wedding is a 9 out of 10.
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Apr 27, 2013 matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fictions-of-the-big-it, ladies-night, miniature

It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old. This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world. Frankie had become an unjoined person who hung around in doorways, and she was afraid. In June the trees were a bright dizzy green, but later the leaves darkened, and the town turned black and shrunken under the glare of the sun. At first Frankie walked around doing one thing and another. T...more

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Feb 25, 2011 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: by-the-ladies, 2011

Superb and deeply affecting portrait of a 12-year-old girl going through the crisis of puberty. Frankie feels as alienated and misunderstood as a young girl can, and her anxious terror as she waits to board the (wedding) train to adulthood is palpable McCullers' vivid realism.

What I found most fascinating was my conflicting sympathy and doubt about Frankie. Is her selfishness and meanness a natural, inevitable phase, or has she already been corrupted by unhappy forces that will lead her down th...more

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Apr 28, 2010 Frank rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Terrific, this is easily the best of hers that I've read. Wonderful evocation of a sensitive tomboy at the brink of puberty. Whimsical, funny and touching. Not as over the top as Reflections in a Golden Eye or as melodramatic and slightly contrived as Ballad of the Sad Cafe. (And not as saccharine as Capote's The Grass Harp.) A great minor masterpiece.

Possibly of some interest for Dutch readers (at least it was for this Dutch reader) is the title and its pun on club memberships, evident from the...more

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Apr 30, 2010 Anita Kelley rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who like literary/classic fiction

Shelves: classics, fiction, novels, womens-interest, read-2010, american-lit-southern, american-lit, time-period-wwii, setting-georgia, child-narrator

Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding is such a strange little book. I loved some parts and didn’t love other parts. It revolves around Frankie Addams, who is twelve and a half years old. For me this was a really significant age, and I think the book does a great job of encapsulating the feelings and experiences associated with that age: Frankie’s no longer a child, yet she’s not yet a woman. She feels like she doesn’t belong anywhere, and she’s trying to figure out who she is and who she...more

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About Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American writer. She wrote fiction, often described as Southern Gothic, that explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South.

From 1935 to 1937 she divided her time, as her studies and health dictated, between Columbus and New York and in September 1937 she married an ex-soldier and aspiring writer, Reeves McCul...more Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American writer. She wrote fiction, often described as Southern Gothic, that explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South.

From 1935 to 1937 she divided her time, as her studies and health dictated, between Columbus and New York and in September 1937 she married an ex-soldier and aspiring writer, Reeves McCullers. They began their married life in Charlotte, North Carolina where Reeves had found some work. There, and in Fayetteville, North Carolina, she wrote her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, in the Southern Gothic tradition.

The title, suggested by McCullers's editor, was taken from Fiona MacLeod's poem "The Lonely Hunter." However, many (including Carson McCullers) claim she wrote in the style of Southern Realism, a genre inspired by Russian Realism. The novel itself was interpreted as an anti-fascist book. Altogether she published eight books.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), written at the age of twenty-three, Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941), and The Member of the Wedding (1946), are the best-known. The novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1951) also depicts loneliness and the pain of unrequited love. She was an alumna of Yaddo in Saratoga, New York.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was filmed in 1968 with Alan Arkin in the lead role. Reflections in a Golden Eye was directed by John Huston (1967), starring Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor. Some of the film was shot in New York City and on Long Island, where Huston was permitted to use an abandoned Army installation.

Many of the interiors and some of the exteriors were done in Italy. "I first met Carson McCullers during the war when I was visiting Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith in upstate New York," said Huston in An Open Book (1980).

"Carson lived nearby, and one day when Buzz and I were out for a walk she hailed us from her doorway. She was then in her early twenties, and had already suffered the first of a series of strokes. I remember her as a fragile thing with great shining eyes, and a tremor in her hand as she placed it in mine. It wasn't palsy, rather a quiver of animal timidity. But there was nothing timid or frail about the manner in which Carson McCullers faced life. And as her afflictions multiplied, she only grew stronger."

After a lifelong health problems including severe alcoholism, McCullers died of brain hemorrhage.
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“The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person. All people belong to a We except me. Not to belong to a We makes you too lonesome.” — 44 people liked it

“They are the we of me.” — 27 people liked it

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