The Member of the Wedding Author:Carson McCullers With delicacy of perception and memory, humour and pathos, Carson McCullers spreads before us the three phases of a weekend crisis in the life of a motherless twelve-year-old girl. Within the span of a few hours, the irresistible, hoydenish Frankie passionately plays out her fantasies at her elder brother's wedding. Through a perilous skylight w... more »e look into the mind of a child torn between her yearning to belong and the urge to run away.« less
I thought this was excellent, kind of melancholy. I could really identify with the young main charater, feeling like there had to be something more exciting than her life right around the corner. The way her thoughts are revealed is so raw and believable.
This southern fiction classic is a dreamy, hazy meandering walk through an unnamed southern town in an unnamed southern state (although I suspect it to be the author's home state of Georgia) through the eyes of an imaginative 12-year old during World War II. The characters were developed superbly and the use of language was creative and unexpected. With all the focus on The Help these days, it is hard not to pay attention to the characterization of Berenice, the family's black maid, and her relationship to Frankie and John Henry. These relationships were central to the story. McCullers presents Berenice with a genuineness and honesty that would have been difficult to achieve in a contemporary work of southern fiction. McCullers was writing about her times at the time and this results in less cliche and, instead, feels very real.
Delightful! The main character, F. Jasmine, reminds me in many ways of the heroine of To Kill a Mockingbird. Not as dramatic a novel, it is of the maturation of a young girl in the deep South.