The Member of the Wedding - Softcover

McCullers, Carson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618492399 ISBN 13: 9780618492398

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2004

Synopsis

The novel that became an award-winning play and a major motion picture and that has charmed generations of readers, Carson McCullers’s classic The Member of the Wedding is now available in small- format trade paperback for the first time. Here is the story of the inimitable twelve-year-old Frankie, who is utterly, hopelessly bored with life until she hears about her older brother’s wedding. Bolstered by lively conversations with her house servant, Berenice, and her six-year-old male cousin — not to mention her own unbridled imagination — Frankie takes on an overly active role in the wedding, hoping even to go, uninvited, on the honeymoon, so deep is her desire to be the member of something larger, more accepting than herself. “A marvelous study of the agony of adolescence” (Detroit Free Press), The Member of the Wedding showcases Carson McCullers at her most sensitive, astute, and lasting best.

About this title

Review:

Twelve-year-old Frankie Adams, longing at once for escape and belonging, takes her role as "member of the wedding" to mean that when her older brother marries she will join the happy couple in their new life together. But Frankie is unlucky in love; her mother is dead, and Frankie narrowly escapes being raped by a drunken soldier during a farewell tour of the town. Worst of all, "member of the wedding" doesn't mean what she thinks. A gorgeous, brief coming-of-age novel.

From the Publisher:

When she was only twenty-three Carson McCuller's first novel The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, created a literary sensation. She is very special, once of American's superlative writers who conjures up a vision of existence as terrible as it is real, who takes us on shattering voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition.

"Rarely has emotional turbulence been so delicately conveyed," said The New York Times of Carson McCullers's achingly real novel about Frankie Addams, a bored twelve-year-old madly jealous of her brother's impending marriage. Frankie was afraid of the dark and envious of the older girls. But as F. Jasmine, in a pink dress, she looked sixteen. No longer a child, she accepted a date with a red-haired soldier and purchased a sophisticated gown for the wedding. F. Jasmine had plans.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0618492399
• ISBN 13: 9780618492398
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176