The Member of the Wedding

An imaginative twelve-year-old Georgia tomboy is jealous of her brother’s upcoming wedding in this classic Southern novel.

Carson McCullers’s classic The Member of the Wedding charmed generations of readers and became an award-winning play and a major motion picture. It tells the story of the inimitable twelve-year-old Frankie, who is utterly, hopelessly bored with life until she hears about her older brother’s upcoming marriage. Bolstered by lively conversations with the family maid, 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. She hopes even to go, uninvited, on the honeymoon, so deep is her desire to become part 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, most astute, and lasting best.

Praise for The Member of the Wedding

“McCullers’s best. An unusual story of a very sensitive child . . . [that] holds you by the very brilliance of its writing.” —Atlanta Journal Constitution

“A serious attempt to recapture that elusive moment when childhood melts into adolescence . . . touching.” —Time

“Rarely has emotional turbulence been so delicately conveyed.” —New York Times