Η παράνυφος

by Carson McCullers, Έφη Τσιρώνη (Translator)

Ο κόσμος φαινόταν να πεθαίνει κάθε απομεσήμερο κι όλα βάλτωναν.
Αυτό το αργό, καυτό καλοκαίρι τίποτα δεν συμβαίνει στη μικρή πόλη της Φράνκι.
Η πλήξη κι ένα παράξενο αίσθημα ότι δεν ανήκει πουθενά τη βαραίνουν.
Κάθεται ώρες ατέλειωτες και συζητάει με τη μαύρη υπηρέτρια του σπιτιού και τον μικρό της ξάδελφο για να σπρώξει τον χρόνο.

Ώσπου, σαν κεραυνός εν αιθρία, φτάνει η είδηση πως ο αδελφός της, ο Τζάρβις, θα παντρευτεί την επόμενη Κυριακή!
Η φαντασία της Φράνκι οργιάζει.
Ονειρεύεται πως έχει έναν σπουδαίο ρόλο στον γάμο, κάνει σχέδια, φτάνει να πιστέψει ότι οι νιόπαντροι θα την πάρουν μαζί τους στον μήνα του μέλιτος, θα ταξιδέψει, θα δει τον κόσμο.
Αλλά η μέρα του γάμου –και της απότομης προσγείωσης– δεν αργεί…

Η Carson McCullers, η ποιήτρια των αταίριαστων και των μοναχικών, συνθέτει μια αξέχαστη ηρωίδα στο κατώφλι της εφηβείας.
Σε εκείνη τη στιγμή της ζωής που, εξόριστος από τον κόσμο των παιδιών και αμύητος στον κόσμο των ενηλίκων, θέλεις να ανήκεις κάπου, με την ίδια λαχτάρα που θέλεις να ανοίξεις τα φτερά σου και να πετάξεις για πάντα μακριά.
Ένα οξυδερκές μυθιστόρημα, με την υπογραφή μιας από τις σημαντικότερες Αμερικανίδες συγγραφείς του 20ού αιώνα, που μεταφέρθηκε επίσης γνωρίζοντας μεγάλη επιτυχία στο θέατρο και στον κινηματογράφο.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Coming Of Age, Literary Fiction, Southern, Novels, Young Adult

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Carson McCullers was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the Southern United States. Her other novels have similar themes. Most are set in the Deep South.
McCullers's work is often described as Southern Gothic and indicative of her Southern roots. Critics also describe her writing and eccentric characters as universal in scope. Her stories have been adapted to stage and film. A stage adaptation of her novel The Member of the Wedding (1946), which captures a young girl's feelings at her brother's wedding, made a successful Broadway run in 1950–51.

Reviews

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remember the oppressive boredom of a long and sultry teenage summer?
Feeling vaguely fearful and fiercely moody, at the precipice of childhood’s end.
Wanting to be alone, grown, and babied too.
Unsure whether to belong or be different.
Everything in flux, including your very sense of self.

This short novel will take you back to that time.

“This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member…
It was the summer of fear for Frankie...
The summer when Frankie was sick and tired of being Frankie...
The year when Frankie thought about the world.”


Image: Belonging - and not, by johnhain/Pixabay (Source.)

Mood(y) and characters

This is a book of mood and transition more than plot. Of vivid, believable, quirky characters.

It covers a few days in the life of 12-year old tomboy Frankie. It’s set in the southern US, in the early 1940s. Frankie’s father owns a watch, clock, and jewellery shop. They’re white, not well off, but not poor either. They don’t own a car, but employ Berenice (who is "colored") as a cook, housekeeper, and childminder. Six-year old cousin John Henry is often around: bright for his age and both a comfort and annoyance to Frankie.

Her older brother, Jarvis, is returning after two years away with the army, to marry Janice. Suddenly, everything changes for Frankie - including the name she uses: F Jasmine, and finally Frances: one in each section of the book. She has some similarities with Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, another motherless tomboy in the deep south, albeit slightly younger.

Frankie becomes obsessed: wanting to be a part of not just the wedding, but the married life of her brother and the bride she has yet to meet.
“They are the we of me.”

In a subtle masterstroke of not belonging, the eponymous wedding happens offstage: we see the buildup and the aftermath, with only a few retrospective details of the event itself.

“The wedding was like a dream outside her power or like a show unmanaged by her in which she was supposed to have no part.”

Passing through the valley of the shadow of death sex

“There was an uneasy doubt that she could not quite place or name.”

Frankie’s mother died giving birth to her, and she’s known other people who died. But it’s the shadow of puberty, sexuality, and sex that lingers more darkly and puzzlingly. The pain of no longer being able to share her father’s bed. Misunderstandings of things seen and heard. Her misreading of a potentially dangerous situation made me shudder with vicarious fear over many - familiar - pages.

A wedding is a happy occasion, but the mood of the story is heavy with increasing foreboding, albeit sprinkled with touching moments and gentle humour. The final tragedy is unexpected, unnecessary, and powerful.


Image: Taylor Flanagan as Frankie, Chelsea Manasseri as Berenice, and Jago Mystiek as John Henry. Photo by by Errich Petersen (Source.)

Radical

Segregation is “the unseen line”, but neither McCullers nor her characters think “colored” people should be separated and there’s a very matter-of-fact and accepting conversation about a cross-dressing gay man (using terminology of the time).

At the last supper before the wedding, Berenice and Frankie put the world to rights and get existential. Berenice would have “no separate colored people”, with everyone having light brown skin, blue eyes (like her glass eye), and black hair. And no war. Frankie wants material things like planes and motorcycles for everyone, “a better law of gravity” (I love that!), and for people to be able “instantly change back and forth from boys to girls”. How radical is that for 1946?

Multisensory

It’s words on a page, but vividly so. Pages permeated by music (as all McCullers’ works are - she was offered a place to study piano at Juilliard). Here, it’s the recurring “jazz spangle” of a piano-tuner in a neighbours’ house, leaving melodies unfinished.

I’m sure I’d know the fragrance of Sweet Serenade if I ever encountered it. And bridging words, visuals, and scent, is lavender: usually an aromatic plant, but here, the colour of lips, ears, sky, and an evening.

Relishing revisiting

I first read this poignant novella about a tomboy near-teen, when I was a tomboy teen: desperately wanting to be adult, but wary too. Longing to belong, but also yearning to be uniquely myself, if I could only figure out what that was.

I’ve read it at least a couple of times since, and again, now my own child is beyond a teen. It’s all so true, even though it’s set in a time and place I’ve never been.

This was the first McCullers I read, and one of the first American books I read. A schoolfriend, who is still a close friend, suggested it, and I went on to read all McCullers’ other books more than once. Catherine, thank you.


Image: Carson McCullers (Source.)

Quotes

• “The summer was like a green sick dream, or like a silent crazy jungle under glass.”

• “The sound of whistling, and it was a grieving August song that did not end. The minutes were very long.”

• “The lavender sky had at last grown dark and there was slanted starlight and twisted shade.”

• “Noises at twilight had a blurred sound, and they lingered.”

• “Their voices bloomed like flowers… She had the feeling that unknown words were in her throat, and she was ready to speak them. Strange words were flowering in her throat and now was the time for her to name them.”

• “The trees were poison green. There was a jellied stillness in the air.”

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

2025: Perceptions change. Carson McCullers is one of the great American writers of the first half of the 20th century. I first read Member of the Wedding seven and a half years ago and remember the book generating much discussion; however, I didn’t remember much of the book only that it had been enjoyable. Last week a close Goodreads friend read and reviewed this opus, which whetted my interest for a reread. Member of the Wedding is a classic coming of age story that nails the physical and emotional changes taking place for a twelve year old girl. If a person wanted to understand these changes better, then McCullers portrayal of Frankie Addams is the place to start. I can’t call myself an expert, but I do have three teenaged daughters and teach fifth and sixth graders on a regular basis. The changes are real, and, yet, I enjoy being around that age middle grade student and experience how much they change from the beginning of the year to the end. Seven years ago, I did not delve into the characters or plot, just the writing, hence I decided that Frankie’s coming of age story merited a refresh with these changed perceptions.

Frankie Addams is your classic twelve year old girl only she isn’t. I have to keep in mind that McCullers wrote this book in 1946 and it took place prior to the end of World War II. Her mom died in childbirth, leaving Frankie and her older brother Jarvis to be raised by their now widower father and housekeeper Berenice. Published sixteen years later, I do wonder if Harper Lee got her idea for the premise of To Kill a Mockingbird from Member of a Wedding. Of this, we shall never know. I get that the gist that Frankie’s father Royal Addams, a respected business owner in town, knew that he could not raise two children alone. This was the 1930s; the idea of a single father parenting two children just wasn’t done. Royal Addams moved to the same block as his sister “Pet” West and her family. Between the Wests and Berenice, Royal Addams would have help in raising his children. This is speculation although what I deduce from piecing together Frankie’s thoughts. Although Berenice loved on Frankie and her cousin John Henry West, she is not a replacement for a mother. Royal Addams did not do much parenting, so Frankie began the changes of adolescence without parental guidance. She viewed herself as grownup and bored of life in her small southern town. She heard of the war from her brother Jarvis, a soldier who had been stationed in Alaska, and desired to travel around the world. Viewing herself as grownup and bored came to a head when Frankie learned that Jarvis was to be married to Janice Williams of Winter Hill. Growing obsessed with the wedding, Frankie concocted a plan to finally run away once and for all.

I understand why twelve year old Frankie would want to run away. Her only friend Evelyn had moved away the year before and she was not a member of any club. All the older girls walked in packs and busied themselves with boys and makeup, but they did not invite Frankie to take part in these teenaged escapades. Frankie, on the other hand, did see herself as grownup. Her only friend at the time was John Henry, and he was six, a baby to a twelve year old. The only thing Frankie thought would save her life would be to become a member of her brother’s wedding and run away with Jarvis and Janice on their honeymoon and travel all over the world. She reinvented herself as F Jasmine and created the JA club- Jarvis, Janice, Jasmine. Together, she believed, they could take over the world. Again, this is small town southern America circa 1943 give or take. With no mother or teacher or mother figure to guide her into adulthood, Frankie thought her only escape was to sabotage her brother’s wedding. Adults viewed this as childish, whereas Frankie believed that she was adult enough to make her own way in the world- at age twelve. She attempted to prove her point by hanging out at the Blue Moon Inn, scoring a date with a soldier on leave, not knowing what the soldier had in mind. The soldier on a three day bender had no idea that Frankie was only twelve. Today he would be locked up for his actions. In print, McCullers speculates, scares Frankie out of her wits, and has her injure the soldier in self defense. After this episode, Frankie aka Jasmine still surmised that the best course of action would be to run away with her brother and his bride. If only the adults in her life discovered her feelings and conflicted emotions.

The story arc occurs over three parts, each with a different name for Frankie as she crosses the bridge from childhood toward being a young lady. She goes from being Frankie to the confused F Jasmine to the more mature Frances. The bulk of the action takes place in part two with Frankie taking on the persona of F Jasmine. Her father notes that a young lady should no longer want to sleep with her father in his bed, so she got her own room in the attic. Most girls would be thrilled. Frankie had mixed emotions which is normal for her age. She decided in the name Jasmine to appear more mature and purchased a dress for the wedding befitting of a woman, nearly fooling the soldier. The one ally she had was Berenice who wasn’t her mother but attempted to impart life’s lesson of her own failed marriages. She prepared Frankie’s favorite foods and related stories at the dinner table, the most poignant of them being that if everyone went about changing their names, then the world would be confused. Things happen to people and others associate these events with a name. F Jasmine grew skeptical but as she matured and navigated adolescence, she understood. With the novel too short to delve into Frankie and Berenice’s relationship, the reader could see in this short span that this woman was one of few people who actually cared about Frankie Addams’ well being aside from her adolescent longing and dreaming. As a woman, she knew that this too would pass.

The song not a girl and not yet a woman describes Frankie Addams. As she matured and grew into her given name Frances, she understood that her wedding antics were childish. Seven years ago I noted that McCullers could write, but that statement had been written by an unseasoned reviewer. McCullers wrote what many think is her opus The Heart is A Lonely Hunter at age twenty three. The tale of Frankie Addams, McCullers published at the ripe old age of thirty six. As a writer, she achieved many accolades early into her career, so the fact that she could write was indeed an understatement. She is often included in lists of the south’s most famous writers, and her stories are included in southern anthologies. Writing about Frankie Addams and her life changes makes one pause for thought and realize that not much has changed in regards to changes of twelve year old girls in the last eighty years. Today these girls have support systems to help guide them toward adulthood. Frankie had an oblivious father and well meaning housekeeper. It is a relief to me that she eventually grew up. Her story is a cautionary tale to mentors of young people to help them through adolescent changes. It is a scary time and every twelve year old girl deserves a mentor figure. After finishing another year around eleven and twelve year old girls, I have seen these changes for better and worse. Like the girls I see on a regular basis, Frankie seems better for the wear on the other side of these changes, brought to the forefront of society by McCullers in this award winning novella.

4.5

2017: As my reading tastes expand, I attempt to read books by women authors from across the globe, both contemporary and classic. My reading journey until now had never included the work of Carson McCullers, even though my mother has been urging me to read her books for years. When a few friends from the reading for pleasure group said that they were doing a buddy read of McCullers' Member of a Wedding, I was pushed to join them. While not as highly regarded as her definitive work The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Member of a Wedding is McCullers' tale of coming of age in the south in the 1940s, a story of a misfit girl in need of guidance to navigate the world. This touching story has generated many discussions in our buddy read and one that I am grateful to have joined.

Frankie Addams is twelve years old and has grown up in an unnamed rural community in Georgia. She reminds me of an older Scout Finch, yet less informed before her father is for the most part absent from her life. Like Scout, Frankie comes from a family where her mother died in childbirth, leaving her father a widower who never remarries. It is up to the family's colored housekeeper Berenice to guide Frankie through her childhood, and, while Berenice is always around to provide hugs and cookies, she has left Frankie largely unaware of the world at large. At the cusp of puberty, Frankie remains naïve to the changes about to happen to her and still runs wild with her younger cousin John Henry West. Having no female friends or family members to teach her about the birds and the bees, Frankie is perfectly cast as the town's misfit, while Berenice prays that a girl best friend enters her life sooner than later.

It is in this context that we meet twelve year old Frankie in the August of her brother's wedding as she plots to leave her home and join her brother on a worldwide adventure through life. She tells her father and Berenice and anyone who will listen that when the family goes to the wedding in Winter Hill, that she will not be coming back. Naturally because her brother's name is Jarvis and his bride to be is named Janice, Frankie decides to call herself Jasmine, making her a natural member of the JA club. She believes that Jarvis and Janice will adopt her and take her with them wherever they go, making her a member of their wedding. This plotting leads Frankie to buy a lewd dress for the occasion that John Henry dubs a Christmas tree and has her gallivanting through town on adventures as she is restless and has no adult guidance in her life. While Berenice teases her for her choice of gown, she does little to stop Frankie from exploring her community, even when she is on the verge of grave danger. The father just nods when Frankie says she is not coming back, because either he does not believe this to be true, or he is so removed from his daughter's life that he does not know what goes on at his home on a daily basis. With the home life being what it was, I almost wanted Frankie to leave town, even though I knew that this was not a feasible possibility.

McCullers can flat out write. Her style is simple and soothing that has the reader reeled in from the opening paragraphs. Yet, the writing is also insightful as she creates multi layered characters and creates a place for them in the world at large. In many meaningful exchanges between Frankie and Berenice, McCullers has Frankie asking her housekeeper if the reason why she does not have many opportunities available before her is due to her skin color. This is wise beyond a twelve year old's years and also ahead of her time for the south during the Jim Crow era. McCullers lived some of her adult life in New York and may have been influenced by northern life. As a result, she has inserted forward thinking characters into a largely backward thinking southern town. While the two do not entirely mesh, McCullers has spun a soothing, southern tale that takes readers back to simpler times.

My friends in this buddy read listened to an audio version narrated by Susan Sarandon. While I did not have the audio on hand, I envisioned how Sarandon would speak various portions of the novel, adding an extra layer to the beauty of this book. Although I still have not read McCullers' definitive work, I thoroughly enjoyed The Member of the Wedding. This novel allowed me to end my reading year on a positive note as I enjoyed my time with this classic southern author and made for compelling discussions in our small buddy read group. While McCullers' other novels do not feature Frankie Addams, I am looking forward to spending more time with this gifted novelist in the years to come.

4.5 stars

[Luís · Rating 4 out of 5]

What talent this young Carson has! Having written a jewel-like "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" at barely twenty years old, and still knowing at almost thirty years old, say adolescence with such accuracy!
It is difficult not to link the two novels in spirit, as their particular atmospheres converge, all in damp heat and heavy frustration. Between village alleys, the stifled footsteps of tired workers, departing soldiers, and fields as far as the eye can see lead nowhere.
With The Member of the Wedding, however, we are much more refocused on the uniqueness of place and time, with very often the feeling of being in a play where long scenes, very elaborately lit, dialogues, and movements occur around the table. From the kitchen, also refocused, of course, on a character who, over a weekend, painfully gets rid of her molt (Frankie), dreams of her becoming nature (F. Jasmine), and then becomes herself (Frances).
It is a masterful "play" that suggests more than it stages, portraying the smooth drama of this zone of discomfort between leaving childhood and transitioning to adulthood, embodied by a solar and stormy twelve-year-old Frankie Adams, lost between two worlds, casting off while clinging to her nanny's neck.
It is a short novel about a universal subject, with a bit of depth and delicate music. It is charming.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm an (soon to be published - sorta - already) author. So I'm experiencing the very surreal world of Goodreads on a different level now, wincing a bit every time I sign in and see the number of ratings slowly accumulate. I've been mostly lucky and blessed by the generosity of wonderful readers, with a few doozies thrown in there for good measure (and more to come, I'm sure....).

It makes me contemplate my own past carelessness in reviewing, and even in reading. How I haven't always brought my "best reader" to a book, and how that does me and the author and anyone who happens upon my review a bit of a disservice.

I can't go back, sadly, but I'm more conscious now about bringing my best to each book I read. This one, for example, took Carson McCullers five years to write. Five years of her precious life to write this gorgeous thing, all 150 pages of it. It deserved my best, and I hope that I brought it.

So much care and love and pain went into the crafting of this short novel. That's plain to see. It's incredibly, sensitively, painstakingly rich. It's lyrically expressed. It's heart achingly authentic.

It brought back for me The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, what with the 12-year-old female protagonist, a tough little being in an equally tough and alienating world. Both books could be called "coming of age" novels, but I hesitate to label them as such. There's so much more happening here involving identity - racial, sexual, social - that exceeds the often sweet connotations we associate with "coming of age".

The story is set in an unnamed town in the Southern U.S., but I wouldn't call McCullers' style Southern Gothic. If her style has a name, I'd say it is Southern Realism. Frankie is having a tough summer, a summer in which she doesn't belong - to anything. Unless, of course, you count the kitchen, where she and Berenice and John Henry sit, eat, and fractiously play cards to pass the time. Now, with her brother's upcoming wedding, she's finally got something to look forward to. Frankie holds on to the promise of this wedding with all she's got. The anticipation of finally being part of something, and finding her "we" in the soon to be newlyweds, is everything to her.

She's essentially fallen in love with her brother's wedding, and all it could mean for her life.

We readers ache at this; we want to warn Frankie. We want to tell her it's dangerous to fall in love, to put all one's eggs in one place with no plan B. But we understand, at the same time. We've been there, or our own version of it. We've all wanted to be someone else, or somewhere else, or at the very least, gotten a little lost in dreams. We may even still be mired in those dreams, and Frankie reminds us of it, and we ache again.

Frankie, or F. Jasmine, or Frances, is at a turning point in her life and her identity. McCullers shows us how she tries names on, like a new hat, and how each name offers different context and possibility. Identity is the pivotal theme here. Frankie muses (in a way that feels shockingly relevant) about how she'd like to switch between female and male identity, and Berenice wishes that people were all of the same colour. In one incredible scene in the kitchen, a deep melancholy hits all of them as they realize, due to their identities, their individual lack of agency and utter loneliness in the world.

The world is "sudden", according to Frankie, and yes, it is. Sexuality lurks ominously in the shadows. Death is around the corner. One day could make all the difference, or not.

Five years made the difference here, because as I read this book 76 years after it was published, I felt the rush of connection and understanding that Frankie was searching for. Thank you, Ms. McCullers.

[Mariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Guille · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Era la hora en que las formas, en la cocina, oscurecían y florecían las voces.”

McCullers recrea maravillosamente los tiempos, la atmósfera, los sentimientos, de eso no hay duda, ya lo comprobé de sobra en las dos novelas que de ella he leído. Pero en este caso tengo un problema, no me interesa especialmente este paso de la niñez a la juventud llamado adolescencia que con tanta gravedad pintan muchos.

“«Quisiera ser otra persona que no fuera yo»… Aquel verano, Frankie se sentía enferma y cansada de ser quien era. Se odiaba a sí misma y se había convertido en una criatura perezosa e inútil que vagueaba por la cocina, sucia, ansiosa, mezquina y triste.”

Qué le voy a hacer, en mi caso ese paso solo supuso un desbarajuste temporal en mi vida social al no comprender como algunos de mis amigos anteponían las chicas (¡puajh!) al fútbol. Después sí, cuando al poco ya preferí estar cerca de Maripili a marcar un gol también llegaron esas preguntas existenciales de por qué yo, para qué yo, y por qué a mí no me hace caso Maripili.

Por eso mismo, tampoco recuerdo ningún momento trascendental en el que todo encajara y la vida se hiciera más leve, los gorriones revolotearan a mi alrededor y se oyera el canto agosteño de las cigarras. Lo más parecido fue cuando por fin Maripili me dejó darle un beso… ¿o fue ella quién me besó a mí? Ains, no sé, pero beso hubo seguro, y en ese momento no había persona en el mundo por quién quisiera cambiarme.

“Hoy no veía el mundo como algo suelto y resquebrajado que giraba a mil seiscientos kilómetros por hora… Hoy el mundo le parecía más próximo que nunca.”

[Diane Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second read of this novel was even more satisfying, and heartbreaking than the first. Not just because of Frankie, Frances, F. Jasmine, and all the other people she wants to be, but for Berenice and John Henry too.

Frankie Addams is one of those rare fictional characters who has entered my soul and wedged her way into a little corner where she will remain forever. The dialog in this small novel rings so true I can hear it still. It is no small feat to get inside the head of a 12 year old girl and let us feel the fear and confusion on the cusp of entering into the strange world of adulthood. We are also allowed into the head of Berenice, the black housekeeper who is Frankie's confidant and champion, and in a lesser way, into the loneliness of her widowed father. The novel takes place over 3 days in August before her brother's wedding. Most of it takes place in the kitchen, with Frankie ranting about her life and making plans to escape. It never occurs to her that her brother and new wife might not want her to go along on their honeymoon........

Frankie grows up a lot in 3 days, and we get to accompany her on her journey of discovering things about herself. And somehow we know that she'll be okay. Because underneath it all, she's smart and brave and loving and resilient. Because that's what it takes.

[Laysee · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old… Frankie had become an unjoined person who hung around in doorways and she was afraid.’

These words introduced me to Frankie Addams and reacquainted me with the tribulations of being an adolescent. Regarding The Member of the Wedding, McCullers once revealed to Tennessee Williams: “I was trying to recreate the poetry of my own childhood.” It was fascinating to read how McCullers captured Frankie’s shifting sense of identity over a span of about four months as she morphed from being Frankie to F. Jasmine, and finally to Frances.

Frankie did not like who she was. “I wish I was somebody else except me.” Ostracized by older girls who regarded her as being too young and mean, she was bored and lonely. She spent most of summer in the kitchen with her colored cook, Berenice, and her 6-year-old cousin, John Henry. To her then, it was not much of a life. Frankie wanted to leave her hometown and never return.

McCullers had a style of writing about Frankie’s feelings and fresh realizations in an oblique fashion, which unfortunately reminded me a bit of Clarice Lispector’s style in ‘Near to the Wild Heart.’ Here’s an example: ‘And then, on the last Friday of August, all this was changed: it was so sudden that Frankie puzzled the whole blank afternoon, and still she did not understand.’ I did not either.

It took me a while to figure out why Frankie was afraid. I believe it was a fear of being separate from people and events deemed happening or significant. She feared not being included. And so, a story unfolded of Frankie’s obsession with becoming a member of her brother’s wedding. It was a bitter-sweet story of a young girl’s naivety, foolishness, and optimism that was in part heart-attacking and hilarious.

The most enjoyable aspect of this story was the laugh-out-loud conversations sassy Frankie had with Berenice and John Henry over meals and card games. They discussed serious topics too, such as how ‘we are all caught.’ That we are born the way we are and cannot be someone else is perhaps the essence of this novella. Berenice said it well, “The point is that we all caught. And we try in one way or another to widen ourself free.” The desire for freedom begins at adolescence. I must add that I liked learning about southern dishes and looked up pot-liquor and hoppin-john (Frankie’s favorite food).

In less than 180 words, McCullers explored identity and perspective-taking through the eyes of a young teenage girl with a touch that was charming and endearing.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

She was afraid of these things that made her suddenly wonder who she was, and what she was going to be in the world, and why she was standing at that minute, seeing a light, or listening, or staring up into the sky: alone.

I read a lot about loneliness. Overwhelmingly, the books that I gravitate towards seem to have at least some thread of loneliness. But this...this didn't just deal with loneliness, this was trying to explain absolute aloneness. That completely exposed and silent and almost panicked feeling of being just you, by yourself, in a world full of “we,” part of nothing and no one. I was a child who was alone a lot, and there were passages in here that were painfully realistic to me. So many dusks in darkened backyards with the distant sounds of people’s dishes clinking, a dog barking, other kid's voices, and maybe a faraway radio or car horn, and none of it is yours.

This little girl narrator stood around, walked around, sat around. She wanted out. She needed someone, almost anyone. She looked up from the twilight into lighted house windows and peered into doorways, searching. She was selfish and mean with flashes of anger, but that anger made so much sense to me. She’s stuck and we’re all stuck, and damned if I of all people don’t know just how futile it can turn out to be to leave a place and start over and find that distant dog barks and car horns are everywhere, especially at dusk.

This book surprised me. I liked it more than Lonely Hunter, perhaps because I related to it on a deeper level, but even the writing felt more intimate to me, more tortured and dreamy and in parts, philosophical. As others have pointed out, the ending feels oddly tacked-on and almost ruins the perfect tension in the first 90% of the book. Almost.

[Dem · Rating 2 out of 5]

My second novel by Carson McCullers and I am afraid this is where we part company as I find her novels peculiar and her writing while descriptive very repetitive.

This is a novel loved by many and disliked by few and I am afraid I fall in step with the "few" group.

I am not a fan of teenage coming of age stories so wasn't excited about reading this one. However It came highly recommended to me by a friend and I do enjoy trying books that don't particularly appeal to me in order to step outside my comfort zone.

I didn't connect with the character of Frankie, and found the story lacked depth. The novel was repetitive and drawn out. While I sympathized with the young girl's loneliness and how difficult and isolating the situation she found herself in was, I just didn't feel any emotion in the telling of the story.
Yes the writing is descriptive and I did enjoy the prose of the novel as McCullers paints a vivid picture with her language. I do judge a book by my eagerness to get back to it once I put it down and I didn't look forward to picking up this one each evening. This is one of those novels where I doubt I will remember the characters a year from now, hence my 2 star rating. An ok read but not a book for my favorites shelf.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here’s the February House in Brooklyn, one of the great artistic flophouses, where for a while in the 1940s Carson McCullers crashed and crashed with WH Auden, Jane and Paul Bowles, Gypsy Rose Lee and, briefly, a chimpanzee. McCullers was an avid drunk, as was everyone else. One night they ran out into the street to chase a fire engine, as one does, and McCullers came back with the idea for this book. Which does not, by the way, have a fire engine in it, or a chimpanzee.

Instead it has a twelve-year-old in it. This is a real life young adult novel, written about young adults for young adults, and I definitely want to point out that why is anyone still reading Catcher in the Rye when this and We Have Always Lived in the Castle exist. If you know any teenagers, for fuck’s sake give them exactly these two books.


That’s Anna Paquin!

Anyway Frankie is twelve, so she changes her name twice over the course of the book. She spends a lot of time sitting around a table with the family cook and some creepy little kid. Seriously, that’s like three quarters of the plot, and if you think that sounds boring then you haven’t read anything by Carson McCullers, who’s a writer who not only goes “straight to the story, as a circus dog breaks through the paper hoop,” but who also wrote that sentence about it. You should start now!

“The world is certainly a sudden place,” and a dangerous one, and danger creeps up here - at first you’re like hey, that guy’s creepy, and then you’re like oh no he’s coming over here, and then...the world is a sudden place. She whales him in the head with a pitcher, btw, is what happens. In case you really wanted to know how much trauma you’re in for.

McCullers had moved out of the February House by the time she finished Member of the Wedding. It took her five years! It’s not even a long book! But it is perfect, so there’s that. Be perfecter with a chimpanzee, I guess. Let the chimp bust through the paper hoop. Now that’s a story! But this, this too.

[Kushagri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am still processing this book. This was poignant, heart-wrenching, and sublime. I don’t know what to write about this book, I lack words to express the plethora of feelings this book evoked in me.
Side note: I feel Carson McCullers and Iris Murdoch would make really good friends!


Edit
Full Review:

This book is a powerful and masterfully crafted coming-of-age story filled with rawness and vulnerability, of the adolescent Frankie Addams. It is a vivid evocation of the themes of identity, belonging, sense of yearning, desperation to be included, and self-discovery.

This poignant novel delves into the deep desires and emotions of Frankie as she grapples with the complexities of growing up and finding her place in the world. Frankie yearns for something more, feeling isolated and disconnected from those around her. She has a desire to escape from herself. She finds some connection with the family’s maid Berenice and her young cousin John Henry. Together through their conversations they try to navigate through the complexities and nuances of adolescence, self-discovery and racial inequality.

‘Listen’, F. Jasmine said. ‘What I've been trying to say is this.
Doesn't it strike you as strange that I am I, and you are you? I am F. Jasmine Addams. And you are Berenice Sadie Brown.
And we can look at each other, and touch each other, and stay together year in and year out in the same room. Yet always I am I, and you are you. And I can't ever be anything else but me, and you can't ever be anything else but you. Have you ever thought of that? And does it seem to you strange?'

‘I think I have a vague idea what you were driving at’, she said. 'We all of us somehow caught. We born this way or that way and we don't know why. But we caught anyhow. I born Berenice. You born Frankie. John Henry born John Henry. And maybe we wants to widen and bust free. But no matter what we do we still caught. Me is me and you is you and he is he. We each one of us somehow caught all by ourself. Is that what you was trying to say?'
‘I don't know’, F. Jasmine said. 'But I don't want to be caught.
'Me neither’, said Berenice. ‘Don't none of us. I'm caught worse than you is.'
F. Jasmine understood why she had said this, and it was John Henry who asked in his child voice: 'Why?'
‘Because I am black’, said Berenice. ‘Because I am coloured. Everybody is caught one way or another. But they done drawn completely extra bounds around all coloured people. They done squeezed us off in one corner by ourself. So we caught that first way I was telling you, as all human beings is caught. And we caught as coloured people also. Sometimes a boy like Honey feel like he just can't breathe no more. He feel like he got to break something or break himself. Sometimes it just about more than we can stand.'

‘Yes,' F. Jasmine said. 'Sometimes I feel like I want to break something, too. I feel like I wish I could just tear down the whole town.’

McCullers offers profound insights into the complexities of identity and belonging. The novel has a melancholic yet bittersweet tone which helps in fostering a deep connection between readers and the story. As the narrative unfolds, Frankie becomes obsessed with her older brother's upcoming wedding. She sees this event as an important turning point in her life to get chance to escape her feelings of alienation.

And as she sickened with this feeling a thought and explanation suddenly came to her, so that she knew and almost said aloud: They are the we of me. Yesterday, and all the twelve years of her life, she had only been Frankie. She was an I person who had to walk around and do things by herself. All other
people had a we to claim, all other except her.

Frankie's inner world, desires, fears, and the complexities of identity, are laid bare for the readers to witness and relate to. These leave an indelible impression on the readers and induce lingering reflection.

Much like The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, at the core of this novel we have the themes of loneliness, self-discovery and the universal longing for human connection. McCullers writes these characters who are isolated, alienated and yearning for something, marvelously. The storytelling is empathetic and compassionate, which draws the readers into the narrative. It is a beautifully written underrated literary gem.

This nuanced exploration of these universal themes make a mark on the reader, through their lingering echoes, beyond the last page.

Another timeless classic!

[Zanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frankie is a white girl who lives in a small Southern town and dreams of Alaska. She is twelve years old and in the throes of unbelonging. Her father has told her she’s too old to sleep in his bed, her age mates have formed groups that don’t include her, and her only day-to-day company is her six-year old cousin John Henry and middle-aged Berenice who keeps house. Her much older brother visits home with his fiancee and then goes away again to complete the wedding preparations. Frankie, who will attend the wedding, is intensely captivated by the event to come, to the point of obsession. Carson McCullers, being a genius, renders this banal situation with the nightmare texture of an agonised crisis of becoming. Frankie’s unheimlich experience of her ordinary, monotonous life seems perpetually liminal. Even when she joyously enters the centre, connecting with all around her through the bridge of the wedding (at last a part of her life that others can relate to, a generic topic), she strays to the unsafe edges, she exaggerates, she lies.

Frankie is an unlikeable protagonist; she is awkward, self-centred and selfish, gloomy, given to melodrama, unfeeling and sometimes manipulative towards others. I recognise her totally and terribly. I was just like this when I was twelve years old. And I swear I’ve never felt that about a literary tween, or if I have I was kidding myself. The honesty of the portrait hurts as Frankie hurts. I never stopped loving her and praying* for her to be safe and get through the fearful time, however horrible she was, because she was real to me, her pain was real. This is what it’s really like, I constantly felt.

The relationships and interactions between Frankie and Berenice and John Henry are central. John Henry is as convincing a character as Frankie. Often he is more sympathetic: when Frankie uses him (to relieve her loneliness) or mistreats him, when he longs to go out and play with the other children. Unlike Frankie his sense of himself is healthy, but like her he is at different times both nice and cruel to her in his childish ways. Berenice, a black woman who has been married several times, is sensible, straightforward, motherly up to a point. She coaxes and scolds and warns and protects Frankie, often impatient with her but never unkind and often humouring her whims. Although Frankie is not satisfied in her need for “membership” by her relationship with Berenice, she takes Berenice’s oft-repeated anecdotes and life-stories to heart, they form the basis of her meagre knowledge about romantic love and sexuality. Her empathy for Berenice, uneven and awkwardly or rudely expressed, is redeeming; she will not always be this awful awkward twelve year old. She will grow into someone capable of loving and caring for others.

Frankie’s wrestles with her identity and the instabilty of her self-perception are staged with the seriousness of tragedy, of the grandeur and pain with which Frankie experiences them. Her adolescent alienation, never elevated to a heroic struggle, is embodied in the sometimes disjointed and repetative language, which is also hauntingly beautiful, like a sorrowful chant. It’s the writing of a genius of feeling…

[Gelareh Askari · Rating 4 out of 5]

فضاسازی درجه یک بود و افکار راوی رو خیلی خیلی درک میکردم. مکالرز به خوبی و هنرمندانه از دوران نوجوانی نوشته و به نظرم بخش زیادی از داستان بر اساس زندگی خودشه. توصیفهای اواسط کتاب کمی حوصله سر بر بود و دوست داشتم اواخر کتاب بیشتر از افکار فرنکی بخونم، اما درکل پیشنهادش میکنم، لذت بخش بود.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever picked up a book you are certain you have read before and found that nothing feels familiar on reading it again. Of course the first time I read it was for a college course in 1967 so there may be a valid reason aside from lost brain cells...simple time or perhaps short cuts for class. But when I reached almost the very end of the book, one plot point did seem familiar and now my doubts about truly having read it are gone.

As for the book itself, Frankie/ F. Jasmine/ Frances is a wonderful creation. Twelve, going on forever, she is struggling to understand who she is, what her world is and where she belongs in the world as a very large whole. Over the course of a few days, and followed by a short coda, we watch her fight with herself, her family, her housekeeper who is more than that, almost the whole town as she wages the battle with growing up. Of course she doesn't know what the battle is and that is one of the beauties of this novel...Frankie's inability to articulate even to herself what is wrong. She has one demand/desire: to go away with her brother and his new bride after the wedding. To escape her life. Everyone else knows what the outcome of that demand will be.

There are episodes of beautiful prose throughout the novel that capture memories of summer and heat so well.


Time in August could be divided into four parts:
morning, afternoon, twilight, and dark. At twilight the
sky became a curious blue-green which soon faded to
white. The air was soft gray, and the arbor and trees
were slowly darkening. It was the hour when sparrows
gathered and whirled above the rooftops of the town,
and when in the darkened elms along the street there
was the August sound of the cicadas. Noises at twilight
had a blurred sound, and they lingered: the slam of a
screen door down the street, voices of children, the
whir of a lawnmower from a yard somewhere.
(loc 1567)


This reminds me of summers of my childhood. The only stylistic negative for me, and this may be personal nitpicking, was the degree of repetitiveness in parts of the storytelling. For me at times the story stood a bit still. Then at some point the forward movement picked up and did not stop (even when Frankie continued to be in the kitchen with Berenice).

Lastly I found Berenice to be a wonderfully realized character who could be a mother-substitute, a voice of insight on another race and way of life, a voice of reason for a girl child approaching her teen years.

[Chrissie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, a gem! Why I found it amazing and thus worth five stars is explained below in the partial review.

I will only add here a bit about the book's setting: Georgia, 1944-45. You see the world through the eyes of 12 year old Frankie, or F. Jasmine Addams. SHE, not I, will explain to you why she appropriated this name. Not only do you see the emotional turmoil of a preteen but you also get the racial tensions in the South and the tension created by the War. We know it is 1944 from the simple line that "Patton is driving the Germans out of France". One line and so much is said. No long discourses on history.

Do you remember when you were caught between being a child and an adult and belonging nowhere? Alone....and the world is a scary place.

The narration is fantastic; it is read slowly, with feeling, and it is easy to follow. Wonderful Southern dialect.


***********************************


After part two of three OR after three fourths of a 6 hour audiobook:

Lend me your ear for a moment please. I consider myself pretty hard to please. For this reason I tend to prefer non-fiction because then I tell myself I will at least learn something if the writing disappoints, if the story fails. But the most stupendous books are those of fiction where the writers create a marvelous gem all from NOTHING. They create a tale from assorted words and how they string them together, their imagination and their ability to capture human emotions that we all share. So when I run into astoundingly beautiful writing, and by that I do not mean "pretty" but rather writing that speaks to us all, that has the ability to to pull us out of our own existence and allows us to share common experiences and emotions, now that is something else. THAT is what Carson McCullers does in this book. Fantastic writing.

Do you remember your preteens, when you didn't feel comfortable in your own skin, when the whole world changed over night and all was frightening? Physical changes and emotional changes that throw you off balance. Do you really remember that period in your life? Here it is again captured in writing.

Don't read this. Listen to it narrated by Susan Sarandon. Stunning performance.

Don't miss this book.

Yep, I have read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. This is even better!

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, the surprise "like" of the summer was Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, so safe to say that I was less surprised to enjoy this as much or more. At 160 thrifty pages, it hits the sweet spot that many novels miss when they lack editors willing to break the news to authors that their books are good but would be better still after a 20 - 40% weight loss.

The Detroit Free Press says this is "A marvelous study of the agony of adolescence," and though the protagonist Frankie is only 12, we'll just have to assume she's an early bloomer. A lot of the book occurs in the kitchen of her house, where Frankie tolerates (and pretends to not love) conversations with the family maid, Berenice, and her little cousin John Henry. Frankie's older brother is marrying in mere days and this girl wants for all the world to go on the honeymoon with her hero and his new wife. Kids bored with their little town lives will do such truck.

There's one scene about 2/3rds in that is magical stuff. It may be all of half a dozen pages, I don't know, but all three characters, the black maid, the sad girl, and the confused little boy, accidentally talk their way into an existential corner that leads to tears. McCullers' handling of mood via description and characterization is spot on, and the unanswerable questions about life will sound familiar to any reader who has ever thought too much for his or her own good.

Life, my friends, is equal parts lovely and sad.

[Lori Keeton · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

Carson McCullers draws you into the awkward and confusing existence of a 12 year old girl, yearning to belong, not yet an adult but ready to make the leap into maturity. She understands very little about that world and what it means. This short novel takes place in a hot Georgia summer and centers on Frankie Addams’ awareness(or lack of) and fear of figuring out who she is to be and how to be that person. She lives with a distant and inattentive father and her only companions are her young 6 year old cousin, John Henry and their African-American cook, Berenice. Frankie’s dull, boring summer turns upside down when she finds out that her older brother Jarvis is coming home from the Army to get married.

Frankie feels so unconnected to everyone, even the teenage girls snub her and leave her out of their club. She’s feeling gangly and self-conscious after a growth spurt and she is moody and grumpy all of the time. She becomes obsessed with and fantasizes about how her brother’s wedding is going to change her life, thinking about all the places they’ll go together. Frankie wants so much to be a part of something.

This story is much more amazing than this very short paraphrase. You get lost in McCullers prose and begin to feel like you are Franky and that every thing she does and thinks is happening to you. That’s how special of a writer McCullers is. She doesn’t just show you how angst-ridden and distraught Frankie is. Instead, she puts you right into her thoughts and into her mind as a reader you experience what Frankie is experiencing. It’s an amazing thing. As a reader, you are Franky because you connect with her on some level of sameness. You see your own 12 year old, disordered self who grew 4 inches overnight and was lanky and uncoordinated. You remember your gawky and clumsy ways and your lonely experiences from adolescence and know that Frankie will get through them because you did.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book right up until Part III, which is very short, a kind of addendum added onto the main story. And I thought - no: that is overkill - overkill being the apposite word. It's as if the talented Ms McCullers couldn't rest with the story just as it was - she had to make it into a rip-your-heart-out climatic ending. Maybe some people like that?

So, the delightful, superb, so beautiful middle section is quite simply the three main characters: Frankie, or F. Jasmine as she calls herself in part II, Berenice and little John Henry West, Frankie's cousin - just sitting around eating dinner - hoppin'-john (peas and rice), Frankie's favourite; sweet potatoes roasted and split open, ham on the bone, which Berenice pulls at daintily with her fingers and corn bread to mop up the pot liquor!

It's not the food that gets me - although that is enjoyable; it is the relationships between the three and how they talk to each other - how they love each other and how the two children take all their worldly thoughts to Berenice and how Berenice relates the stories of her three bad marriages and her one good one.

There are various minor characters in the background, Frankie's father, the soldier, friends of Berenice - Honey and T.T., the people F. Jasmine meets in her walks through town - but they just form a kind of hazy surround to those three central characters - a fourth maybe is the town itself - hot and sultry in the Deep South.

Here is an example of McCullers catching with pitch perfect ease the conversation between the twelve year old and the house-maid, Berenice who cooks the children's meals - and does everything else too.

'Now tell me your honest opinion,' F. Jasmine said.
But Berenice looked at the orange satin evening dress and shook her head and did not comment. At first she shook her head with short little turns, but the longer she stared, the longer these shakes became, until at the last shake F. Jasmine heard her neck crack.
'What's the matter?' F. Jasmine asked.
'I thought you was going to get a pink dress.'
'But when I got in the store I changed my mind. What is wrong with this dress? Don't you like it Berenice?'
'No,' said Berenice. 'It don't do.'
'What do you mean? It don't do.'
'Exactly that. It just don't do.'
F. Jasmine turned to look in the mirror, and she still thought the dress was beautiful. But Berenice had a sour and stubborn look on her face, an expression like that of an old long-eared mule, and F. Jasmine could not understand.
'But I don't see what you mean,' she complained. 'What is wrong?'
Berenice folded her arms over her chest and said: 'Well, if you don't see it I can't explain it to you. Look there at your head, to begin with.'
F. Jasmine looked at her head in the mirror.
'You had all your hair shaved off like a convict, and now you tie a silver ribbon around this head without any hair. It just look peculiar.'
'Oh, but I'm washing my hair tonight and going to try and curl it,' F. Jasmine said.
'And look at them elbows,' Berenice continued. 'Here you got on this grown woman's evening dress. Orange satin. And that brown crust on your elbows. The two things just don't mix.'

And so the 'discussion' swings back and forth between the two with comments thrown in from John Henry - I would like to print it all, but it's a bit long for a review - so I'll just add on the last couple of paragraphs.

'I think you're just not accustomed to seeing anybody dressed up,' F. Jasmine said.
'I'm not accustomed to human Christmas trees in August.'
So Berenice took off the sash and patted and pulled the dress in various places. F. Jasmine stood stiff like a hat rack and let her work with the dress. John Henry had got up from his chair and was watching, with the napkin still tied around his neck.

The real wrench in the story is that relationship between the little boy and Frankie - the descriptions of the six year old trying his best on all occasions to please Frankie and then defying her in frustration with her impossible demands is where the heart-break truly lies.

I suspect that in Carson McCullers' life there was a small boy - and her completely normal childhood behaviour of viewing the boy as an appendage to her own needs - was something that probably haunted her. My point however, is that we the reader are haunted by John Henry from the second he appears and each time after when Frankie either dismisses him or demands him to come at her whim.

The second heart of the story - of course - is the black woman's tender and loving care of the two children who are not her own. She treats each of them with a gentle seriousness - which occasionally borders on the stern. But her patience and her thoughtful consideration of how each child thinks and feels is apparent in the dialogue.

This book is really a five star read - I just can't quite forgive McCullers for the tragic last section.

[Sana · Rating 3 out of 5]

داستان جالبی داشت اما بازهم وسطاش حوصلم سر میرفت.
ولی بازهم دوست دارم ساعت بی عقربه رو از این نویسنده بخونم.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

“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 she was 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 bright dizzy green, but later the trees darkened, and the town turned black and shrunken under the glare of the sun.”

And so begins The Member of the Wedding, a 1946 Southern Gothic classic novella by Carson McCullers. It is the coming of age story of 12-year old Frankie Addams, a lonely awkward young girl, a tomboy, and struggling to fit in in her small southern town. And feeling that she got herself into so much trouble, Frankie began to think it may be better to stay home. But at home there was only Berenice Sadie Brown and her young six-year old cousin John Henry West, who would sit around the kitchen table and say the same things over and over again to the point that she felt the world began to die each afternoon with nothing moving. But it seemed like all that changed one day in August when her brother and his fiancé stopped for a visit to invite them to their wedding in Winter Hill before her brother, a soldier in World War II, was to be stationed in Paris, France. Frankie becomes fixated on the wedding believing it is her chance to escape this small town and travel the world with the newlyweds. She is the daughter of a jeweler, her mother dying in childbirth, and is a precocious and stubborn child. The Member of the Wedding is a poignant exploration of complex characters navigating themes of identity, family, and societal expectations. I always find myself in awe of the beautiful writing of Carson McCullers.

“They are the we of me.”

“A last difference about that morning was the way her world seemed layered in three different parts, all the twelve years of the old Frankie, the present day itself, and the future ahead when the three of them would all be together in all the many distant places.”

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd imagine the word 'universal' gets thrown around a lot in regards to this work. The temptation of it is exactly why I am excising it from my vocabulary, for even the small amount of literature I've read in the culverts of unacknowledged canon were enough to show the lie of the word. I find an immense amount of resonance in this work, resonance structured on a foundation of tokenism, sentimentality, and other measures of self-willed isolation commonly shared with other white people works of 'universal' meaning. I do not claim that works such as Cities of Salt or Almanac of the Dead do not rely on the same dynamics of self vs other, but no one would think to call them universal. That epithet requires power, and the world at large is not of a mind to grant them that.

How much does the cult of US American childhood play a part in letting millions of white parents sleep at night? Boys will be boys, girls will be sugar and sweet, and every excuse will be made when a troubled teenage soul slaughters their propagators with gun in hand. I wonder how many condemned Frankie's father for letting her roam rather than the systematic excision of her mind from her body by the mores of society. There are the usual excuses: lack of mother, lack of white female friends of a common age, the lack of urban space commonly put as the ultimate solution by the North and the South. As per usual, McCullers comes much closer to the heart of it than most who try their hand at the metaphysics of growing up, but the threat society places on the body of a young white girl is still centered around that fact of whiteness.

I may be too old to take as deep a comfort in this as I would have once, but my methods of reacting to fear of the oncoming void with rampant imagination are no different now than they were at age twelve and under. Enough experience has honed it into a serviceable way of living in this capitalistic age, replete with the communication skills and awareness of personal strengths requisite in this country of mine. However, I now know that I am never going to "grow up"; for better or for worse.

[سـارا · Rating 3 out of 5]

فکر میکنم اگر تو سن کمتری این کتاب رو میخوندم شاید میتونستم دنیای عجیب و خودخواهانه‌ی فرنکی رو درک کنم، اما الان فقط برام کسل‌کننده و بی‌معنی بود. البته مکالرز به خوبی از بیان احساسات و حال و‌ هوای نوجوونی یه دختر ۱۲ ساله براومده، با این حال من فرنکی قصه رو اصلا دوست نداشتم :)

[Barry Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've finally jumped feet first into the succulent literary world of Carson McCullers and I've found myself not drowning but floating lightly around observing the minuscule nuances of Southern life. The Member of the Wedding is a subtle but loud novel. It comes packaged with all the traits of Southern Gothic but it transcends and subverts the genre in such a way to dig itself out of its Faulknerian tragedy and into something that has been crafted by only the finest of word smiths. The narrator Frankie is remembered in the same light as Harper Lee's Scout Finch and Betty Smith's Francie Nolan but should not just be relegated to this list she should be and in many has grown a personality of her own and has turned this common "coming of age" novel into something so much more than that. This is a wonderful little novel, sadly overlooked by many but I do hope that you take the very short amount of time it takes to read this because I can assure you that your time will not be wasted.

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember reading this in my 7th grade English class, and I absolutely loved it. I think I’m due a re-read as an adult. ❤️

[E. G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chronology
Introduction, by Ali Smith

--The Member of the Wedding

[shizuku · Rating 4 out of 5]

داستان در مورد دختری دوازده ساله به نام فرانکی هست ،وقتی برادر و نامزد فرانکی به خونه میان فرانکی تصمیم میگیره همراه اونا و در مراسم عروسیشون شهررو ترک کنه ، و داستان حول محور خیال پردازی فرانکی در مورد عروسی و صحبت های آشپزشون برانسیس و پسرخاله اش جان هنری میگذره...
به نظرم وقتی قهرمان داستان یه کودک هست ،نوشتن کتاب خیلی سخت میشه ،نوشتن از احساسات کودکانه ،فکرهایی که توی سرش میگذره و رفتارش خیلی سخت میشه و به نظرم کارسون مکالرز در این کتاب اینکارو با نبوغ خاصی انجام داده،و عنوان کتاب خیلی براش مناسب هست جای جای کتاب میبینیم و حس میکنیم که در جستجوی یک پیوند واقعا عنوان فوق العاده ای بوده ،شخصیت فرانکی ،شخصیت بیشتر بچه های این سن هست یا حداقل من اینطور فکر میکنم که هست ،جوری که خودش رو در پیوند با برادرش می دید و می گفت برادرم و نامزدش مای من هستن،و باید من هم به دنبالشون برم ،برام خیلی قابل درک بود ،در حالی که فرانکی از سمت پدرش و گروه دوستاش طرد شده بود و صفات بدی بهش نسبت داده بودند میبینی�� که برادرش اون رو در آغوش میگیره و ازش تعریف میکنه پس طبیعی بود که برادرش رو مای خودش بدونه و بخواد دنبالش بره این خیلی فوق العاده نوشته شده ،توی بعضی نظرها خوندم که داستان به نظرشون خیلی طولانی و کشدار بوده ولی واقعا این همون منطق بچه هاست که در مورد مسئله ای که ذهنشون رو مشغول کرده بارها حرف بزنن و خیال پردازی کنن، و میبینیم که انقدر این مسئله توی ذهنش بزرگه که میره و با آدم های شهر در مورد عروسی حرف میزنه ... شخصیت اف جازمین یا همون فرانکی بنظرم خیلی عالی پرداخته شده بود و یه جاهایی تصورات و سوالاتش منو به یاد آنشرلی می انداخت ،و پایان کار پسرخاله فرانکی،جان هنری ،واقعا فوق العاده قشنگ نبود؟جوری که فرانکی دوست داشت با گروه دوستاش بازی کنه و جوری که نشون نمی داد واقعا فوق العاده نبود؟
،بنظرم شخصیت پردازی مکالرز واقعا عالی بود و من این کتاب رو خیلی خیلی دوست داشتم ،همونجوری که آواز کافه غم بار رو خیلی دوست
داشتم ... نثر نوشته های مکالرز ساده و روان هست و همین برای من دلنشین ترش می کنه...
پشت جلد کتاب نوشته شده که این اثر و شخصیت پردازی فرانکی در حد هکلبری فین مارک توین و هولدن کالفیلد سلینجر هست و بنظر من واقعا
⁩هست،این کتاب تبدیل به یکی از بهترین های امسالم شد

⁦ʕ´•ᴥ•`ʔ⁩

[Bart Moeyaert · Rating 4 out of 5]

De man zit met zijn buik dicht bij zijn stuur. Zijn ronde gezicht is vol van zijn gelijk. Hij staat in Kalmthout bij een kruispunt van niks, en hij heeft zonet een jonge vrouw aangereden.

‘Aangereden’ is precies het goede woord: de vrouw ligt bijna op de grond, haar fiets zit bijna onder de auto, en ik begrijp pas veel later dat de man haar vanuit zijn auto ook nog eens verbaal zit aan te rijden. Zonder uit te stappen.

Ik heb niet zien gebeuren hoe de auto de fiets heeft geraakt. Ik was de vluchtheuvel aan het naderen. Toen ik eenmaal op de vluchtheuvel stond en links van me keek, zag ik dat er blijkbaar iets aan de hand was. Veel te lang heb ik zitten registreren: auto voor en achter me, dit is een vluchtheuvel, dit is bebouwde kom, daar staat een auto links, daar wilde een auto rechtsaf gaan, en kijk: een jonge vrouw heeft haar fiets nog wel vast, maar ze ligt bijna op de grond. En ze huilt.

Het is de dag voor Kerst. De man die dichtbij zijn autostuur zit, en daardoor bovenop de wereld lijkt te zitten, zegt door zijn open raam tegen de vrouw dat ze niet aan die kant van de weg had mogen fietsen. Volgens mij zegt hij dat. Hij vindt dat hij niet verantwoordelijk is. Hij heeft vier wielen, zij heeft er maar twee, dus ziet hij zichzelf als de baas.

Ik had moeten uitstappen. Die gedachte zeurt al dagenlang. De bestuurder van de auto voor me is wel uitgestapt. Hij heeft zijn auto geparkeerd om de jonge vrouw even te helpen. De man met de buik en het ronde gezicht is nog maar net (en zonder pardon) doorgereden. Om de kreeften voor zijn Kerst op te halen. Omdat de Hubo op zijn to-do-lijst stond.

Ik had mijn auto naast de auto van de bestuurder voor me moeten parkeren. Sterker nog: ik had midden op de vluchtheuvel moeten uitstappen om de man die vol was van zijn gelijk een paar directe vragen te stellen.

Uitgerekend de afgelopen dagen heb ik ‘Op jouw bruiloft’ uitgelezen, de vertaling van Molly van Gelder van ‘The Member of the Wedding’. Voor mij was dat een hernieuwde kennismaking, na meer dan dertig jaar. En het was precies het goede moment. “Zo zaten ze met z’n drieën op de Schepper en het werk van God te mopperen,” schrijft McCullers over haar personages Frankie, Berenice en John-Henry.

Lees dit boek, hoe langzaam het ook is, en laat het traag doorwerken. Laat het verhaal je plagen, tergen zelfs. Zoals ik hoop dat de man die de jonge vrouw aanreed af en toe wakker schrikt en niet meteen begrijpt wat er in zijn ronde kop aan de hand is, maar dan ineens tot een besef komt. Het is geweldig als iets stiekem binnensijpelt, zoals dit boek van Carson McCullers stiekem onder je huid gaat zitten.

[Connie Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

The pure magic that McCullers creates with the written word makes this worth 4 stars right off the get go. She gives us the character of Frankie or F. Jasmine who is so ready to leave 12 years behind and move forward that she is a bundle of nerves and dreams. She doesn't feel like she fits in her skin any more and is so anxious to shed it and find out who she is suppose to be. That terrible angst of adolescence, the feeling that you are suppose to be doing something else, while not quite sure you want to leave what is safe but knowing for certain that there is more for you in life. This is a true tale of one's coming of age. Standing right on the edge, knowing that once you step over you are never quite so carefree and innocent....but you so want to step into the grown up side. A time of excitement, fear and woe all mixed together.

Frankie is determined to travel the world with her brother and his soon to be bride. She is ready to leave all that she knows behind and seek adventure. She feels stifled in a small town where she doesn't fit in, isn't a member of the club and her best friends are the very wise, black housekeeper Berneice and her 6 year old cousin John Henry. She laments her fate day after day as she awaits the big wedding day, but the closer it gets the more she seems to reminisce and feels a little sad about moving on. Her dreams are big but so far her world is small even though it is safe.


McCullers took me into that old southern house, right up to the kitchen table eating Hoppin John, playing bridge with sticky stained cards while the flies buzzed in the thick and humid air. I could feel Frankie just bubbling over to tell anyone who would listen that she was going to leave this little town behind. I could hear the regret in Berneice's voice as she told her stories, I could feel John Henry's childish wonder at everything around him.

The changes coming to the South ran parallel to Frankies growing up. The world was at war, Civil Rights were just around the corner and the country would never be the same again. You could feel the changes that were coming, they just hung heavy in the air....for Frankie and the South that she knew so well. Such a simple story, taking place over only a few days, but so well crafted the impression it leaves will last through time.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

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. She was afraid because in the war they would not include her, and because the world seemed somehow separate from herself."

When it is announced that her brother is getting married, Frankie becomes obsessed with the idea of leaving home and going to live with him and his new bride.

"I love the two of them so much. We'll go to every place together. It's like I've known it all my life, that I belong to be with them."

The family cook, Berenice, tries to talk sense into Frankie, but she won't listen. Meanwhile, Frankie walks all over town telling everyone she meets that she's going to a wedding and then moving away, and she bosses around her young cousin, John Henry. The story builds until the weekend of the wedding, the outcome of which I will not spoil.

This is the second Carson McCullers book I've read this year, the other being "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe," and I like her writing so much I plan to finish out her oeuvre.