With delicacy of perception and memory, humour and pathos, Carson McCullers spreads before us the three phases of a weekend crisis in the life of a motherless twelve-year-old girl.
Within the span of a few hours, the irresistible, hoydenish Frankie passionately plays out her fantasies at her elder brother’s wedding. Through a perilous skylight we look into the mind of a child torn between her yearning to belong and the urge to run away.
Hanging Around in Doorways
I first read Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding (1946) in my twenties – a teaching colleague had recommended it – and loved it. I took it at face value: I enjoyed its plot, succumbed...
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