Cassandra at the Wedding
Ratings9
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings9
Average rating4.1
Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-wracked, 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. 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, as she struggles to come to terms with the only life she has.
First published in 1962, *Cassandra at the Wedding* is 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm not sure if I really liked this, but I like having read it, if that makes sense. Cassandra narrates most of the book (the short middle section is narrated by her twin, Judith) and she's so hard to be in the head of. It's all so claustrophobic and uncomfortable, but everyone is so interesting but difficult. They're so insular and so it's hard to read about. Judith's section, while difficult because of Cassandra's actions, was so much easier to read, but I think a whole book from her side wouldn't have worked as well. Anyhoo, that's rambly. I'm glad I read this but it wasn't always an easy read, but very worth it in the end.
