The Member of the Wedding

Rating:
Summary: Mind-numbing garbage.
Review: I've read all sorts of books throughout my educational career...from James Joyce to dry sociological texts. I've read books so dull I could feel them sapping my life energy.
Never before, though, have I had to suffer through a book as mind-numbingly awful as 'Member of the Wedding.'
Mere words cannot communicate how bad this book really is. It follows the pathetic, worthless existence of Frankie, the most unlikeable, irritating, sorry excuse for a human being ever to disgrace a piece of literature.
This book reads like a bad Linkin Park video, and consists largely of Frankie whining about wanting to belong, and wanting to travel with her older brother, who is about to get married. The ONLY thing I can say for this book is that it is relatively well-written...obviously, Carson McCullers was a good writer. But Thomas Harris wrote 'Silence of the Lambs' and the he wrote 'Hannibal.' 'Hannibal' is a god-awful book, and it STILL doesn't approach the level of putridity reached by this claptrap.
Of course, many reviewers would have you believe that this book is about the awkwardness/isolation/loneliness of acolescence. Bull. I was an awkward/isolated/lonely teen, and I did strange things, but Frankie's actions are downright bizarre, inexplicable, and only serve to make you loathe her further.
For absolutely no reason, the author kills off a couple characters at the end, just to make sure that if you weren't suicidally depressed by the book by that point, you sure wouldn't have a reason to live after finishing the whole book.
Like I said, think bad Linkin Park song: garish, whiney, needlessly depressing, and completely pointless. There is no message here except that there is no hope, no moral except that life is empty, pointless, isolated, and lonely. I'm a big fan of literature/music/art that emphasizes such themes as isoltation and abandonment...and thus, I tend to enjoy such works even if they're pretty lousy.
This, however, was the bottom of the barrel in cheap, exploitative, pathetic, useless literature. If you want to read something that deals with isolation/abandonment/loneliness, read Eugene O'Neill's 'The Iceman Cometh' 'Long Day's Journey into Night' or 'The Hairy Ape' I promise you will find all much more well written and moving than this garbage.
In conclusion, when I finished reading this vile book, I hated the main character, I hated the human race, I hated the author responsible for my suffering; but most of all, I hated myself, for subjecting myself to this bloated corpse of a novel.
Read it on the toilet, or better yet read something GOOD and save this to use as toilet paper. Consider it an appropriate afterthought.

Rating:
Summary: Depressing, but worthwhile
Review: This book presents a very bleak view of coming-of-age with a style that seems to be deliberately suggestive of a child's nightmare. The prose is impressionistic, almost dizzyingly so at times. The plot isn't much to brag about, but I suppose she wasn't going for plot. It was worth reading once, but I don't think I'll come back to it too often.

(As an aside, the reviewer who claimed it was unrealistic that a soldier might try to pick up a 12-year-old girl irritated me a little bit. First of all, some soldiers simply do want 12-year-old girls--just ask some of the folks in the Phillipines, Japan, Okinawa, Vietnam etc. Secondly, McCullers makes it abundantly clear that F. Jasmine is taller and looks older than she is. I'm not sure how anyone could've missed that.)

Rating:
Summary: GREAT BOOK
Review: The Member of the Wedding was overall a good book. It tells of a young girl's childhood naivety. It shows how, being a young misfit, she yearns to grow up and be accepted. Her wild actions are intriguing. It wasn't very realistic, however, that a soldier would try to pick up a 12 year old girl. But, the talk of her dreams were very realistic. All children dream of running away, but then they never actually do it. It shows Frankie's personality great, though, when she does try to runaway, taking her father's pistol with her. Throughout the book, all Frankie wanted to do was be accepted as a young adult rather than a child, and she goes through a lot to try and prove it. In the end, however, she remains naive.

Rating:
Summary: Might like the play better
Review: I just finished this book earlier today as required summer reading for my AP English class. I sort of understand why this book was a classic, and I know that most classic books are unconventional on purpose, but to me this book seemed to have some major flaws. First off: very few events occur in the first half of the book. It is mostly narrative -the constant descriptions of Frankie's surroundings and experience, while profound, are repeated over and over, basically filling up space. The book is short but took almost 5 days to read because it is soo dull at times.I understand that the message of the difficulty of adolescance and not feeling as though one belongs in the world was communicated through the extreme character, so it is probably not for kids to read because most would simply dismiss it as terrible writing(I know all my friends who are still reading it are) because they would fail to identify with Frankie/F.Jasmine/Frances. The play is probably better because the events would be condenced(less talking).