The Member of the Wedding
Carson McCullers, 1946
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
176 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780618492398
Summary
Many consider Carson McCullers’s third novel, The Member of the Wedding, her masterpiece. Set in a small southern town in the 1940s, the book examines a crucial turning point in adolescence.
Twelve-year-old Frankie Addams is utterly, hopelessly bored with life until she hears about her older brother’s wedding. Bolstered by lively conversations with the family’s servant, Bernice, and her six-year-old cousin John Henry—not to mention her own unbridled imagination—Frankie takes an overly active role in the wedding, even hoping to go on the honeymoon, so deep is her desire to be a member of something larger, more accepting than herself. (From the publisher.)