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The Member of the Wedding

by Carson McCullers

3.75 · rating details · 3,755 ratings · 346 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 her older b...more

Paperback, 163 pages

Published August 13th 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Jan 12, 2010

Melody rated it

· 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 c...moreCarson 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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Dec 18, 2007

Susan rated it

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
--So...more

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Jan 03, 2011

Mariel rated it

Recommends it for: Return to Send Her

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

Shelves: babywecouldbefamous, rubber-ring, influential, morrissey-readinglist

Float 'cause the hos are getting out of line! They need a 'fro.

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 ...moreFloat 'cause the hos are getting out of line! They need a 'fro.

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.(less)

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Dec 29, 2007

Rebecca rated it

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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Jan 30, 2011

Dominic rated it

· 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 F...more

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May 11, 2009

Maralise rated it

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 ...more

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Aug 18, 2007

Shawna rated it

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’...more

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Jan 25, 2009

Karen rated it

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...moreSo 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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May 29, 2011

KJ rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to KJ 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 shor...more

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Feb 06, 2011

Jason rated it

Shelves: read-2011

There is a lot to admire in this short novel about a young girl coming of age in a small southern town, starting with the ways in which this character at the cusp of adolescence is continually tricking herself into believing something foolish, blindly ignoring criticism. The characters of Bernice and John Henry are also wonderfully rendered. What doesn't carry as much is the narration, unsure, as it is, whether to constrain itself to what its protagonist knows (which it sometimes does) or to exp...more

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Oct 14, 2010

Kelsey rated it

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 r...moreI 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

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 p...moreReader 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

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 ...more

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Aug 01, 2009

Sandra rated it

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 on...moreThis 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

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 marri...more

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Feb 25, 2011

Joe rated it

Shelves: x2011-february, 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...more

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Apr 28, 2010

Frank rated it

· 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, evid...more

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Apr 30, 2010

Anita Kelley rated it

· 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 w...more

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Oct 27, 2011

Samantha Griffin rated it

In The Member of the Wedding, the main character Frankie is a twelve year old girl who becomes obsessed with her brother, Jarvis, getting married. She spends most of the her time in the novel telling Bernice and John Henry about her scheme to move with Jarvis and his young bride Janice and how they would be so happy for her to come live with them. Just the three of them. The short play doesn't really take long to get through and only has one climatic scene which is where Frankie decides to tell ...more

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Jul 29, 2010

Alison rated it

Recommends it for: fans of Southern Goth fiction, McCullers

Recommended to Alison by: nobody--bought it on the cheap

Short novel about a twelve-year-old overgrown and slightly sadistic tomboy named Frankie who lives with her father (her mom died in childbirth) and spends most of her time with her six-year-old cousin, John Henry, and her housekeeper/nanney Berenice in their small Southern town. The summer of Frankie's twelfth year is spent playing cards at the kitchen table, feeling angry and scared, but mainly lonely.

Frankie's brother Jarvis is in town to get married, and Frankie sees this as a wa...more

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Apr 27, 2009

Jen rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fill-in-the-gaps, classics, southern-lit

Let me just say up-front that I read McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter when I was in 10th grade, for English class with the best English teacher I had ever, including in college. And I loved it. With all of my heart. I've read that book over and over, and I even wrote a curriculum unit on it when I was in college for secondary education. Interestingly, I haven't read that many of her other books. I got The Member of the Wedding for free off of BookMooch, and I decided to do this crazy...moreLet me just say up-front that I read McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter when I was in 10th grade, for English class with the best English teacher I had ever, including in college. And I loved it. With all of my heart. I've read that book over and over, and I even wrote a curriculum unit on it when I was in college for secondary education. Interestingly, I haven't read that many of her other books. I got The Member of the Wedding for free off of BookMooch, and I decided to do this crazy Fill-In-the-Gaps Project around the same time, so I put the book on my list and knew I'd read it soon.

I read this book almost entirely on the plane to San Diego. I was about 30 pages in when I got on the plane, and it was over 2 or 3 hours before I landed in CA. It's good to know her writing is always amazing. I adored this book. It's sad and touching and nostalgic and beautiful. Frankie (aka F. Jasmine) is a rough-and-tumble tomboy just entering puberty and feeling desperately alone. Her best friend has moved away, her other friends have all turned into teenagers and she's not ready to do that, her dad works all the time. She spends most of her summer with her dad's cook/maid and her six-year-old cousin. When her brother comes home from the military and brings his new bride-to-be to visit, she falls in love with them because they belong to each other. And she decides that she belongs with them to, that she'll finally not be lonely any more when she goes to their wedding and they will of course take her with them after they're married.

Ninety percent of this book takes place the week before the wedding happens. Not a lot happens as far as action, but a lot happens in Frankie during this week. Her decision to grow up and to belong somewhere, and the actions she takes to make it happen, and her anticipation of the wedding are all so true emotionally, it's hard for me to believe that this could have been written by a grown-up and not by an 11-year-old. And then her utter heartbreak when her brother and his bride leave the wedding without her, and her determination to run away from home are stunning. It's such a simple tale, a child's story of the last vestiges of her childhood being stripped away from her. But it's just so real. And that is McCullers' true talent in all of her books I've read. She puts you through the same emotional paces as her characters, and you come up from the book gasping for air. I can't think of another writer who does this as viscerally, at least for me.(less)

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Nov 23, 2009

Rob rated it

I was hesitant to read this book even though I loved the author's other book--Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and had one of my best teaching experiences with it. But N.P.R. reviewed Member of the Wedding--this past summer. So fortunately I gave it a try. This slim book is marvelous, lyrical, and full of imaginative depth. Yes, it is a young girl's coming of age story, but it still appealed to me a middle-aged male. I couldn't put this book down. Think of an adolescent Scout Finch... Think of a...more

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Jun 17, 2009

Kevin rated it

A born complainer, I can better tell you what an author does wrong than what she does right. So with this book I am at something of a loss for words.
McCullers does one thing right that everybody else in the whole fucking world seems to get wrong all the fucking time, that is to say she creates a compelling child character. Child characters in other books tend to be vehicles for sentimentality and boogers. Frankie however is keenly felt in all aspects: her nascent sexuality, repressed by he...more

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Jul 04, 2011

Jennifer (JC-S) rated it

Shelves: reading-group

‘I wish I was somebody else except me.’

It’s August 1944, and Frankie (Frances) Addams is a twelve-year-old girl living in the American south. Frankie is frustrated and bored, she feels like she no longer belongs. ‘This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member.’ Frankie’s best friend, Evelyn Owen, left town before summer began, and most of the other girls are already thirteen and won’t allow her to be a member of their club. The novel opens in the kitchen of Fra...more‘I wish I was somebody else except me.’

It’s August 1944, and Frankie (Frances) Addams is a twelve-year-old girl living in the American south. Frankie is frustrated and bored, she feels like she no longer belongs. ‘This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member.’ Frankie’s best friend, Evelyn Owen, left town before summer began, and most of the other girls are already thirteen and won’t allow her to be a member of their club. The novel opens in the kitchen of Frankie’s home, with Frankie, Berenice Sadie Brown (the family maid) and John Henry West (her six year old first cousin) present. The novel is divided into three parts, with each part marking different steps in Frankie’s transition from childhood.

In Part 1, news that Frankie’s older brother Jarvis is to marry provides Frankie with a new focus. After seeing Jarvis with his fiancée Janice, she decides to become a member of the wedding, and thinks: ‘They are the we of me.’ She can think of little else other than her plan to be with them after the wedding: leaving the past behind.

It’s the day before the wedding, and Part 2, begins with Frankie walking around town on her way to buy a new dress. She has adopted a new name: F. Jasmine Addams and meets a number of different people on her journey, including an organ grinder and his monkey, and a soldier who treats her as though she is older, and asks her to meet him later to go dancing. Frankie (or F. Jasmine) learns about Berenice’s life, and later experiences fear when she meets up with the soldier.

On the day of the wedding, at the beginning of Part 3, Frankie is now Frances. The wedding takes place, events do not develop as Frankie (or Frances) wished, and she is humiliated. Frances decides to leave home. She writes a note for her father takes his pistol and wallet, and her suitcase and leaves the house. Not knowing where else to go, she goes to the Blue Moon Café where, soon after, the sheriff finds her and takes her home.

‘Frances was never once to speak about the wedding.’

This statement marks the beginning of novel’s conclusion. It is now three months after the wedding and Frances has turned thirteen. She has a new friend: Mary Littlejohn, and her life has changed in other ways as well. Not all of the changes are positive, but Frances is overjoyed to have a new girlfriend. Life continues, and for Frances, at least, there is something to look forward to.
I enjoyed this novel and admired the way in which Ms McCullers brought Frankie and her fears to life. In fewer than 170 pages, Ms McCullers has encapsulated the nature of adolescence for so many: that painful and uncomfortable sense of not belonging and of having no place. As Frankie evolves, becomes F. Jasmine and then Frances, searching for her own sense of self, older readers will recognise the pain of past transition while younger readers, perhaps, are still experiencing it. Frankie is the central character in this novel, but hers is not the only life being lived and Berenice and John Henry are also finely drawn.

I’ve not previously read any of Ms McCullers work, and read this novel as part of a reading group. I’ll be looking to read other books as the opportunity arises.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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Mar 21, 2011

Jessie rated it

Shelves: fiction

McCullers makes writing fiction contagious; I finished her book fueled to launch back into the story I’m working on, which is completely unrelated to her work in theme, though not in region. Can’t believe I’ve only just met Carson McCullers!

The lazy summer kitchen meals shared by Frankie (F. Jasmine rather), John Henry & Berenice are my favorite moments in this book. “It was the hour when the shapes in the kitchen darkened and voices bloomed.” (563) I can feel the lull, smell the fo...more

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Feb 19, 2010

Rachel rated it

I don't think I've read a book that better epitomizes the strangeness of 'growing up.' Spanning just over two days and squished into about 160 pages, the narrative is quite literally made up of intensely concentrated teen confusion and crazy. 12-year-old protagonist Frankie is written as a living manifestation of every insecurity a child could possibly experience as she develops an awareness of herself in relation to other people and what exactly it means to be connected with humanity. Other cha...more

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Jun 08, 2009

Dave rated it

Shelves: read-in-2009

McCullers tones down her scope from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter to take a penetrating look at a Mick Kelly type character. Frankie Addams has many parallels to Heart's lovable teenage tomboy, down to the inclination towards hero-worship and a penchant for dramatic self-destruction. What makes The Member of the Wedding different is Frankie's deeper descent into a world of dark desires unnameable and unknowable to her twelve-year-old mind. Frankie wants desperately to connect to anything, to be n...more

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Nov 16, 2010

kaitlyn rated it

I really loved the beginning of this book. McCullers has such a way of describing feelings that so often feel indescribable. She nailed emptiness, loneliness, longing right on the head and shows you what it feels like to be a person. And all that with a twelve-year-old protagonist.

Some good ones:

Frankie stood looking into the sky. For when the old question came to her—the who she was and what she would be in the world, and why she was standing there that minute—when the old ...more

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Oct 11, 2011

Anne (Booklady) rated it

Shelves: fall-2011, classics

When I read Carson McCullers my minds eye is actually watching a Tennessee William’s play.
“It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old.
This was a 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.”

Frances (Frankie) Addams is at the age where she is mo...moreWhen I read Carson McCullers my minds eye is actually watching a Tennessee William’s play.
“It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old.
This was a 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.”

Frances (Frankie) Addams is at the age where she is moving from childhood to adolescence. At 12 and 5/6s she has grown too tall, has chopped off her hair, and has been kicked from the safety of her papa’s bed to hers in her own hot room. Her best friend has moved to Florida. With no friends other than the Addams’ cook, Berenice, and her six year- old cousin, John Henry for company, Frankie has become mean and bored as well as frightened. She wants desperately to leave her life and town behind. Her solution: her brother’s upcoming nuptials. She will become a member of the wedding and leave with Jarvis and Janice on their honeymoon, never returning thinking: “they are the we of me.” Frankie even changes her name to F. Jasmine Addams to further her thought of “we.” Much as her over-working imagination, Frankie dissolves into her grand plan. Berenice warns her that “three is a crowd” but Frankie ignores the gentle warning.
She wanders through town making “connections” with the people to whom she tells her great plan. But as with all best laid plans, Frankie is crushed when the bride and groom don’t take her with them. She comes home never speaking of the wedding and runs away taking only a suitcase and her papa’s pistol. She ends up at the Blue Moon Cafe where she had a frightening past encounter with a soldier who in a drunken stupor mistakenly assumes Frankie is much older than she is. The sheriff finds her and brings her home. Home three months after the wedding is no longer the comfort as it was for Frankie. Changes, not all positive, await Frances Addams.

McCullers disjointed prose captures Frankie’s fragmented imagination to her own reality well. Though sensitive, McCullers’ novel is dark with some adult themes. Maybe it had to be this way but I do not think an astute reader will think this is her best work nor should be considered a Young Adult novel.

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Oct 18, 2010

Carly rated it

Shelves: special

This book is on a par with A Catcher in the Rye in my opinion. Although I found it much easier to identify with this book than with Catcher, maybe because I am a woman? Is it because this writer is a woman that it is so overlooked?I had to read A Catcher in the Rye four times before I finally realised how good it is.

McCullers' description of a child in that most awful stage between childhood and fully fledged teenagerhood is the best I have read. That desperate, selfish desire to f...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, ...moreCarson 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.” — 24 people liked it

“They are the we of me.” — 20 people liked it

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