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.
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