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59th out of 349 books
—
180 voters
Cassandra at the Wedding
Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-wracked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding.
Dorothy Baker's entrancing...more
Dorothy Baker's entrancing...more
Paperback, 256 pages
Published
September 30th 2004
by NYRB Classics
(first published 1962)
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Jun 26, 2012
Mariel
rated it
2 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
little drummer boy versus thunderclap
Recommended to Mariel by:
Carson McCullers
"You've always needed a lot more of everything than I do," she said. "Haven't you?"
I wanted to tell her that I didn't need much. Just a few essentials- faith in something and a little sense of location, but I didn't. I didn't because I was looking at her and seeing, again, the very face I'd seen behind the bottles in the bar this afternoon, the one that can always give me a turn when I really look at it and know who it is and why it looks back at me the way it does- as if it belonged to me.
Dorot...more
I wanted to tell her that I didn't need much. Just a few essentials- faith in something and a little sense of location, but I didn't. I didn't because I was looking at her and seeing, again, the very face I'd seen behind the bottles in the bar this afternoon, the one that can always give me a turn when I really look at it and know who it is and why it looks back at me the way it does- as if it belonged to me.
Dorot...more
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I have a deep fondness for sad-stuff-presented-cheerfully. The example I always think of is that song “But Not for Me,” specifically one of the versions by Judy Garland. The song is really about anguish, I think, but she sings it in a lovely, fairly understated way that sort of lets you off the hook somehow – like you have a choice between listening to it remotely and staying emotionally calm, or really focusing on it and getting kind of verklempt and suicidal. Most especially, I love the funny...more
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I really liked this... published in 1962 with a great sense of place and a wonderful narrative voice, 'cassandra at the wedding' is charming, smart, sad and funny. Perhaps more witty and smart than funny, it's not laugh out loud funny, here's a quote so you can see what I mean:
'"I think I'll tell you something I wasn't ever going to tell you," she said, and I knew by her face it was important. Also by how long it took her to follow it up. But she did finally.
"It's about Jack," she said. "He doe...more
'"I think I'll tell you something I wasn't ever going to tell you," she said, and I knew by her face it was important. Also by how long it took her to follow it up. But she did finally.
"It's about Jack," she said. "He doe...more
2 likes · like · see review
First published in 1962, Cassandra at the Wedding is a somewhat autobiographical novel (apparently) about identical twin girls, their long-dead bohemian writer mother, their brilliant but alcoholic father, and their maternal grand-mother.
Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student writing a thesis on contemporary French women novelists. She is also staring into the black abyss of depression and alcoholism. Her sister, Judith, has made a break for it and gone to study music at Juliard while Cassandra...more
Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student writing a thesis on contemporary French women novelists. She is also staring into the black abyss of depression and alcoholism. Her sister, Judith, has made a break for it and gone to study music at Juliard while Cassandra...more
CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING. (1962). Dorothy Baker. ****.
The Edwards girls are identical twins – Judith (Jude) and Cassandra (Cass). They were both born and raised on a ranch in the foothills of the Sierras in southern California. Judith still lives at home, but has announced her plans to marry a young man who is about to enter into his internship to complete his M.D. Cassandra is a student teacher at Berkeley, working on completing her doctoral thesis. Their mother died years ago and the girls we...more
The Edwards girls are identical twins – Judith (Jude) and Cassandra (Cass). They were both born and raised on a ranch in the foothills of the Sierras in southern California. Judith still lives at home, but has announced her plans to marry a young man who is about to enter into his internship to complete his M.D. Cassandra is a student teacher at Berkeley, working on completing her doctoral thesis. Their mother died years ago and the girls we...more
Mar 14, 2010
Lobstergirl
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Nicholson Baker
Recommended to Lobstergirl by:
library shelf
Dorothy Baker was apparently a straight woman who liked to write lesbian fiction. The lesbianism of the main character and narrator, Cassandra, is subtly treated. She sits down with her identical twin sister Judith and tells her "as honestly as I could how I'm constituted. With men I feel like a bird in the clutch of a cat, terrified, caught in a nightmare of confinement, wanting nothing but to get free and take a shower." She's also more than a little emotionally disturbed, sees an analyst, and...more
Tightly written with a very well-drawn protagonist, Cassandra at the Wedding is worth reading even if it is a bit dated in some (not all) of its psychological themes. I almost didn't read it for suspicion of any writer who would name her protagonist "Cassandra," but you get over it.
The premise is that Cassandra, one half of identical twins, is preparing to attend - and hoping to thwart - the sudden wedding of her sister Judith. Cassandra is gay (although references to this are oblique, probably...more
The premise is that Cassandra, one half of identical twins, is preparing to attend - and hoping to thwart - the sudden wedding of her sister Judith. Cassandra is gay (although references to this are oblique, probably...more
July 2012
I read The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin last month, but I kept getting stuck (it's the longest short book I've ever read), so to distract myself I started working through my NYRB collection instead.
There may have been a conflict of interest there.
I read The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin last month, but I kept getting stuck (it's the longest short book I've ever read), so to distract myself I started working through my NYRB collection instead.
There may have been a conflict of interest there.
2 likes · like · see review
Published in 1962, this is a superb character study of a brittle yet very bright young woman, Cassandra, who is overly attached to her twin sister, Judy.
Baker reveals the various aspects of Cassandra's character through a lot of superbly crafted indirection. And a lot of very direct direction!
Here is some sample dialogue which does not reveal any of the plot but says a bit about the family. The two 24 year old twins are speaking:
"You want to hear about my thesis?"
"I don't mind."
"Well, I do. I m...more
Baker reveals the various aspects of Cassandra's character through a lot of superbly crafted indirection. And a lot of very direct direction!
Here is some sample dialogue which does not reveal any of the plot but says a bit about the family. The two 24 year old twins are speaking:
"You want to hear about my thesis?"
"I don't mind."
"Well, I do. I m...more
This book has a lot of potential and falls a bit short. Or rather, the character Cassandra has a lot of potential because she's a bitter, queer intellectual, but falls a bit short and is, shall we say it bluntly, annoying and immature. This writing is engaging and very well done and this books a quick read, but the characters grated on me. This book fits into a similar category as "The Dud Avocado" or much of Joan Didion's work. Written in the 1960's it's about privileged white women who never h...more
This book is incredible. It is so tightly plotted, the characters are so real, the story so compelling you can't put it down except to marvel at how you can't believe you never heard of this novel before. Seriously, not one contemporary novel that I've read in the last few years even comes close to this book. Published in 1962, it is not in any way dated. Cassandra could be a graduate student in 2013 as easily as she could 1962. Marriage was a different animal then, presumably, but what this boo...more
This book is MESSED UP. I mean, what a riot this thing is.
The people in the book are weird, but in a way deep down sense. You don't really understand why they're such a strange family, it just kind of dawns on you as you go how very, very f*d up they are. Way big time so.
Although a bit of a period piece because of when it was written the story itself is timeless and unique at the same time - one of the best compliments I can give any story.
I loved it so much I bought a few of her other titles...more
The people in the book are weird, but in a way deep down sense. You don't really understand why they're such a strange family, it just kind of dawns on you as you go how very, very f*d up they are. Way big time so.
Although a bit of a period piece because of when it was written the story itself is timeless and unique at the same time - one of the best compliments I can give any story.
I loved it so much I bought a few of her other titles...more
Reading this book, I couldn't help but think of 'Catcher in the Rye', which I hated, and how much better this is. Now, 'Cassandra at the Wedding' is not very similar to 'Catcher in the Rye', but they share enough similarities for my mind to be stuck on the comparison.
The other comparison I made was with the documentary 'The Bridge', which captures and explores people killing themselves by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.
Anyway, I highly recommend this book. I can only imagine how exciting it...more
The other comparison I made was with the documentary 'The Bridge', which captures and explores people killing themselves by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.
Anyway, I highly recommend this book. I can only imagine how exciting it...more
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The perfect airplane read for a person en route to a wedding, this tautly written 1962 novel about a woman falling apart, coming home to her family’s ranch to derail her twin sister’s wedding. That’s the summary – but obviously it’s about so much more: about the nature of love and obsession, about identity and the self. It’s a novel filled with light and despair, anguish and pathos and extreme feeling. It made me think of the film "Rachel’s Getting Married", another story of a conniving, distrau...more
Quirky, nervy little book with wonderful characterizations. Made me think of Chekhov a bit, those slightly fraught, flawed characters and the way your sympathy for them sneaks up on you. Cassandra is a lovely character. Well, they all are, even if Judith is a bit bland -- but she's supposed to be, so it's OK. And you end up sympathizing with her for just having had to grow up in the shadow of her sister's wacky brilliance.
The Aristophanes connection is accurate, but it's also kind of simplistic...more
The Aristophanes connection is accurate, but it's also kind of simplistic...more
I liked this book. I had never read about twins before and thought it was clever of the author to introduce that subject. I read some reviews of it but was disappointed with the reviewer's attitudes toward Cassandra, the protagonist. I found myself feeling a great deal of sympathy for her plight when she is overwhelmed by the loss of her sister to marriage after a lifetime of togetherness. The suicide attempt upset me but then the introduction of that topic is always upsetting for me. Luckily Ca...more
Apr 30, 2013
Janet
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
coming-of-age,
contemporary-american
To me this was a difficult read because of the subject matters of madness and twins. My grandmother was part of a twin and mad as a hatter. Her entire life she threatened to commit suicide, an act she ultimately managed to complete when I was a young girl of twelve. My mother and her sister were terrified of her and so were my sister and I. She could be lovely at times but she could be so manipulative that it made your blood run cold.
As a result of this I became very interested in psychology as...more
As a result of this I became very interested in psychology as...more
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I found this book frustrating in what was unsaid. I didn't get much of a sense of what exactly had happened with Cassandra, her sister Judith, and their mother. The relationships were obviously complicated to begin with and made more so by Cassandra's instability, but the depth of those complications were left unsaid. I'm ok with some subtext, but I wanted a little more understanding.
I was struck by the timelessness of the writing. If you hadn't known it was published in 1962, you might not gues...more
I was struck by the timelessness of the writing. If you hadn't known it was published in 1962, you might not gues...more
One of those books with casually memorable phrase after phrase, which is really what keeps you reading: the sheer on-the-edge booze-soaked comic desperation of Cassandra Edwards, a charismatic screwup, the black-sheep twin who clings obsessively to her sister Judith and lives in the shadow of her late mother, a writer of some renown named Jane. Cassie is invited to her sister's forthcoming wedding to a doctor, and arrives with the unilateral resolve to make Judith break it off. This is yet anoth...more
As twins, Cassandra and Judith are genotypically and phenotypically identical, and this is where they believe their likeness ends. "No pool needs two moons", Cassandra grimly observes, for they have unconsciously but painstakingly cultivated psychologically and behaviourally separate selves, in order to complement each other as one. Age twenty-four, Judith flees this lifelong identity crisis and Cassandra plunges into a dark depression. This comes to a head when Judith's impending wedding threat...more
never give a book about young women ambivalent about wedding traditions to someone who's about to be married. She'll carry the book around like a devotional, muttering "SO true!" at intervals, at least she will if the book is Dorothy Baker's spare little book about a bunch of hard-drinking, philosophical, Northern Californian WASPs, which is equal parts cruel and tender towards both its protagonist (the antic Cassandra) and its readers.
This one's for the MFA gang. Baker's technique is unimprovable; the shift in first-person narrators is so well done it takes your breath away. And the novel is jammed with writer catnip: twins, pills, an alcoholic professor, a suicide attempt, an aborted lesbian seduction, and a preppy idyll in California.
Reminded me of Virginia Woolf "Miss Dalloway" in that not a lot of action takes place but we are mostly reading the thoughts of Cassandra (and later on Judith), see some of her memories in retrospect and have of lot of things guess for ourselves. There is an introduction to the edition I read by another author who is herself a twin and comments on the depicting of twins in this book. And for me she just by the way also explained some things I probably wouldn't have fully understood otherwise.
Alt...more
Alt...more
This had that hard-edged insightful prose quality that I associate with Patricia Highsmith. Where does Carson McCullers overlap with this one? Lovely details. Strangeness. Sadness. Half-sympathetic narrators, dead people, everyone: the way it should be, and the way it is.
A twin copes with her sister's wedding via pills, sarcasm, plotting, and brandy. By turns darkly funny and rather moving, and, with the exception of a prudish attitude toward bathing suits, tremendously fresh 50 years later.
This was a little more literary than I generally read but it was interesting, although I couldn't relate to the characters. I picked it up because I wondered whether it was related to the film Margo at the wedding - and still don't know as I haven't seen that...
The second book that I read off of NPR's "Three Biting Books For Those Bitter On Valentine's Day" List. I found this book absolutely delightful in how lightheartedly depressing it can be. It also happens to be the second book to ever make me actually start tearing up. Maybe I'm just becoming an old emotional woman.
I appreciate the writing (particularly the sardonic voice of Cassandra herself) but I never really was engulfed by this book. I somehow never got emotionally connected to it. Sometimes that happens.
written under heavy influence of JD Salinger and Dorothy Parker, this book was pleasantly angsty with a dash of sex and the city- style melodrama. that is to say, the melodrama was extremely fluffy with a around the pithy truth, which is so ensconced in subjective re-tellings that it makes the pith seem like almost a parody of itself. the two different narrators tug at the reader's wont to question them. as i read it, i wasn't sure i was enjoying is because it has such a self-conscious girlishne...more
I read this book on an airplane from LAX to RDU with a 3 hour layover in Atlanta. I could not put it down. It was sad and beautiful. You think your life is going one way.
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“So go, girl. We should have been one person all along, not two.”
—
13 people liked it
“There's nothing hard about it. But I get praised for the hardest of things I do, and I do some of the hardest of things. Things like waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night, all alone except for when I'm with someone; and it's getting harder and harder.”
—
3 people liked it
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