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Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley- gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding. Dorothy Baker's entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events in which her heroine appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, absurd, and heartbroken-at once utterly impossible and tremendously sympathetic. As she struggles to come to terms with the only life she has, Cassandra reckons with her complicated feelings about the sister who she feels owes it to her to be her alter ego; with her father, a brandy-soaked retired professor of philosophy; and with the ghost of her dead mother. First published in 1962, Cassandra at the Weddingis a book of enduring freshness, insight, and verve. Like the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides and Jhumpa Lahiri, it is the work of a master stylist with a profound understanding of the complexities of the heart and mind.… (more)
User reviews
This is a wonderfully written story. Cassandra narrates most of the book, and her voice is remarkable. She mostly avoids looking head-on at her problems, and yet her desperation and sometimes delusion are clear. When Judith took a turn narrating, I was a bit scared - I felt like I already understood the situation, from both sides of the story, and I didn't really want a simplified version from Judith. I needn't have worried, though: in fact, Judith's narration managed to add an extra level of complexity.
Recommended for: anyone who likes literary fiction.
This is a tale of an eccentric family -- a philosophizing, early retired father who thrives on brandy; a conventional and sweet, if ineffectual, grandmother; a successful novelist and screenwriter mother, whose presence remains in the house although she has died, and the twin sisters with highly refined tastes and imaginations, as Cassandra insists:
"Take it on faith -- we're special.... Who else could have had our mother for a mother and our father for a father? Who else do you know that drives a Riley and owns a Boesendorfer, or even knows what they are. We didn't join Job's Daughters, or go steady with some clod, or live with the Alpha Kappa Thetas, because we never spoke that language or thought in those terms. How could we? We can start living where others imaginations fail."
In clumsier hands, this story could be excruciating, but Baker's touch is light, skillful and amusing. She's not writing about a dysfunctional family, but one rather defined by its quirks and possibilities, as is Cassandra herself.
The novel was published in 1962 and was the last of the four novels Dorothy Baker wrote. I recently read her first novel [Young Man with a Horn] and was so impressed by Baker's handling of dialogue that I wanted to read this novel which is said to be her best. Dorothy Baker's husband claimed that the novel was based on their own two daughters and certainly the dialogue between the two crackles with an intensity that feels like it could have actually taken place. Like her first novel there is hardly a word out of place.
The first part of the novel is from the POV of Cassandra. She is travelling from Berkley California to her parents ranch some 5 hours away. She wants to see her sister who has returned home to prepare for her wedding. We learn that the sisters had set up house together in Berkley but nine months ago Judith had left and had now met a man she wants to marry. Cassandra had only been alone for three weeks before seeking help from psychiatry. Now on her journey home the anxiety that she feels is expressed by her first telephone call to her parents home where it is revealed she is travelling one day earlier than planned to see her sister before the wedding. She finally gets to speak to Judith and her knees "buckle with recognition" when she hears her sisters voice. For the majority of the novel we hear Cassandra's side of the story, her view of the close relationship with her sister and their relationship with their father and Granny who still lives at home. A smaller chunk of the novel is from Judith's point of view before we are back with Cassie.
Baker is able to pinpoint in some detail the sisters' state of mind through their actions and conversations. Because much of the novel is from Cassie's POV she is seen as a sort of victim, the one who will lose most from Judith's marriage. The family unit is a little reclusive living out on the ranch and their father is a professor who has sought solace in brandy after the early death of his wife. The two sisters like him are very intelligent, but this does not help them solve their emotional issues, nobody behaves badly, but extricating themselves from the emotional trauma of their separation proves to be impossible without hurting the more vulnerable Cassie.
The micro world of this novel is not going to shed any light on the human condition, but it does focus extremely well on a vary small incident within it. From the first few pages the quality of the writing hooked me into Cassie and the families' issues, but as the story unfolded I thought the novel lost a little of its intensity. However a very good read and so 4 stars.
The other comparison I made was
Anyway, I highly recommend this book. I can only imagine how exciting it would have been to read it in the early 60's when it was first published, and I wonder, now, if anyone has bothered to add it to the canon of LGBT fiction, where it belongs
The Aristophanes connection is accurate, but it's also kind of simplistic—the book is about a lot more than just the rending of the one from the one true love. There's a whole lot about family—how it gets pulled apart, the traps parents set for their children (that whole "we don't need other people" ethos they grew up with), young people trying to pull away and find their own identities in the face of such an overbearing family unit. I got a very strong feeling of someone in middle age musing about what it is to be young, that period of time before your sense of your own self has settled in. Baker would have been what, in her 50s when she wrote this? It's definitely a mature gaze on events, even though the story is told in Cassandra's voice.
This is a very
The family itself is also very interesting—besides Judith there’s their father, a perpetually drunk philosophy professor; the grandmother; and Judith’s fiancée, the ideal Jack Finch. Also present, but not physically, is the twins’ mother, who has died a couple of years before this novel takes place. If you’re expecting lots of plot, there isn’t much, so part of the strength of this book lies in the characters and how dysfunctional they all seem sometimes.
Cassie is examining her life right before our eyes. Incomplete without her sister. Miserable and self absorbed. I would have loved reading this book
When the novel opens, eponymous Cassandra is on her way home from
The writing is stunning. The cast of characters, although quite short, is brilliant: drunken, arrogant father; meek, aim to please grandmother; future perfect husband Jake and the twins, Judith, a brilliant pianist and Cassandra, a brilliant writer if she can allow herself to be because lurking in the background throughout the novel is Jane, the twin's mother for whom they are still grieving after her death a few years prior.
I loved it. But listening to the Backlisted podcast after I read the book added another whole dimension to the appreciation of this book. I'm pretty sure I'll be doing a lot of that in the future.
From the first paragraph, the reader realises there's something a little odd about Cassie.
As the tale progresses, a whole host of issues are revealed or hinted at - a recently deceased mother, who had
This is class writing. I can't say I enjoyed it- it felt like spending a day in a psychiatric unit with a very demanding patient. But highly accomplished.
Cassandra is a graduate student at Berkeley, who returns home for Judith's wedding to a seemingly ideal
This beautifully written book will stay with me for a while. Written in 1962, it contains elements of that era as represented by the wedding gifts and the grandmother's insistence on public perception. It is short on plot, but very long on character development. The interactions of the family members are fascinating.
Cassandra has returned to her childhood home to attend her twin’s wedding to a nice, young doctor but she is determined to make her sister call the whole thing off. The book has more than one narrator and I really enjoyed Cassandra’s voice. She’s intense, funny and smart with a definite dark side to her personality. Although her selfishness can seem cruel at times, she was quite likeable. When her twin, Judith became the narrator, I was surprised that I also enjoyed her thoughts and words as well as she definitely has the calmer, more sober personality of the two but she knows and recognizes Cassandra’s darker side.
It is obvious that Cassandra is a lesbian although that fact is never definitely declared in the book. The lesbian overtones are quite subtle which I suspect has a lot to do with the times that the book was published. The family seems to acknowledge and accept Cassandra as she is although Cassandra herself seems to be struggling at times. Cassandra at the Wedding is beautifully written, darkly witty, clever and atmospheric. Dorothy Baker strikes me as a very accomplished author who knows how to write comedy. She also trusts her readers to understand and draw their own conclusions and so doesn’t lay everything out on a platter.