The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers (novel #220)

This was the 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. ~ opening lines

 

The author lets you know what this novel is about right away. Because that’s it; that’s the story. Like the only other novel by McCullers I’ve read, this novel is character-driven, with very little plot. It’s a Southern Gothic, coming-of-age tale.

 

This was the summer when Frankie was sick of being Frankie.

 

What adolescent hasn’t experienced that? Frankie spends most days of the long, hot summer in the kitchen with the African-American housekeeper Berenice and Frankie’s six-year-old cousin John Henry. The three spend hours talking about random things or playing cards. They are halfway through the summer before realizing they are not playing with a full deck…and that’s the depressing feeling the novel has.

 

Frankie’s father is a decent parent and does pretty well for a widower, but he hasn’t a clue about what is going on in Frankie’s mind.

 

And though she tries to explain her “unjoined” condition, Berenice and John Henry can’t really understand; no one can, so Frankie is not a member of anything.

 

Until her brother’s wedding, a day trip away, Frankie determines to join the couple on their honeymoon and life after that, never to return to her hometown. She even adopts a new name to be more alliterative with the happy couple. She is now F. Jasmine. For a day or so, the certainty of this plan makes her content and happy. The reader worries how hard she will take the blow when the impossible plan unravels.

 

The Member of the Wedding feels like The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, my only other experience with McCullers. Both novels strike a nearly universal chord: the feeling that no one understands or the desperate need to make someone understand. The Member of the Wedding is a beautiful and poignant rendering of that sentiment.

 

My Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

 

 

This novel satisfies the category “title about a celebration” in the What’s in a Name 2023 Challenge.

 

^.

 

Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco (novel #219)

(translated from Italian by William Weaver)

 

But whatever the rhythm was, luck rewarded us, because, wanting connections, we found connections – always, everywhere, and between everything. The world exploded into a whirling network of kinships, where everything pointed to everything else, everything explained everything else…. ~ narrator Casaubon

 

Foucault’s Pendulum is a satirical novel set in 1970s Italy and Paris. An Italian academic named Casaubon is the narrator, though probably not entirely reliable. The book satirizes conspiracy theories and secret societies. It opens with Casaubon hiding in a Paris museum after closing, anticipating the arrival of a secret society that he believes has captured his friend and colleague Jacopo Belbo. While Casaubon waits, he recounts the events that led to this climax.

 

You remember so much while you wait for hours and hours in the darkness. ~ Casaubon

 

Casaubon’s recollections make up the majority of the novel and concern publishing business interest in secret societies and corresponding research conducted by Casaubon, Belbo, and another colleague, Diotallevi. Together the three “discover” a plan to take over the world, though they know it is a farce contrived by forced connections. The problem is that their work becomes known to some adherents, giving them renewed conviction and resolve.

 

I’ll only mention one of the many other characters, Casaubon’s lover Lia; she was the voice of reason and nearly saved him.

 

As a satire, I suppose it is effective. It is a dizzying compendium of occult actors, secret societies, and conspiracy theorists – the main groups: Knights Templar, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Jesuits, and Baconites. There were many more, plus a few charlatans and madmen thrown in. All complicit and all connected over the centuries. Foucault’s Pendulum has been called “the thinking man’s Da Vinci Code.”

 

Well I must be a dunce. I understand that Eco was satirizing, and he does a good job of explaining how people get caught up in these things – wanting to find “connections” and therefore seeing them. But for me, the story was just absurd.

 

There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics. ~ Belbo

 

 

My Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

 

 

The title refers to an actual pendulum designed by French physicist Leon Foucault. It demonstrates the Earth’s rotation. In the novel, it is on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, France. It has a role in “the plan”.

 

It’s been nearly three months since I reviewed a novel. I haven’t been slacking, but this is a long novel, and I wasn’t enjoying it. That always takes me more time. But more significantly, I’ve been busy. I retired and moved six states away to my dream retirement home in Michigan. More about that transition HERE.

 

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