Ginnie's review
Cassandra at the Wedding
by Dorothy Baker
Ginnie's review
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
Ginnie's review
rating:
bookshelves:
women
I loved this book when I first read it in 1962 and was delighted that the NYRB has brought it back in a fine paperback with a new afterword by Deborah Eisenberg. I wish I understood the magic Baker's words weave over me. . Cassandra is often cynical, passive aggressive, and wantonly perverse in her refusal to "get it," i.e., to love and let love. Her insolence towards the people she says she loves is an astonishing dismissal of their emotional lives. The fact that Dorothy Baker makes it easy for us to see Cassie without Cassie seeing herself is testament to the author's mastery of irony and understatement. Without a doubt Baker has created a character who is both infuriating and heroic. Cassandra is willful, strange and enchanting all at once. The cover painting by David Park is perfectly appropriate for this story. The underlying Freudeanism is a bit dated, but the even deeper concept of Plato's Phaedrus, that the soul must keep looking for its other half is not. A sp...more
