The Member of the Wedding Author:Carson McCullers As Frankie, she was a bored twelve-year-old who raked her fingers through her short blonde hair. She was afraid of thje dark and jealous of the older girls and she had no one to play with but six-year-old John Henry. — But as F. Jasmine, in a pink dress, she looked sixteen. She was no longer a child. She accepted a date with a red-haired soldier.... more » She purchased a sophisticated gown for her brother's wedding. F. Jasmine had plans...« 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.
