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Cassandra at the Wedding (1962)

by Dorothy Baker

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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7072431,916 (3.97)1 / 111
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)
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» See also 111 mentions

English (23)  Italian (1)  All languages (24)
Showing 1-5 of 23 (next | show all)
(4 1/2 Stars) I will think about the prose in this book for the rest of my life. Cassandra is an absolute force of a main character that feels like an intelligent, intoxicating friend. Mostly, this book is about the (lesbian) fear of a future in which a girlhood in which art, travel, and sisterhood are centered absolutely has to give way to heterosexual marriage. Big things to think about.
Also I love books that are about incredibly specific parts of California, which this book delivers perfectly. ( )
  griller02 | Mar 18, 2024 |
Cassandra At the Wedding by Dorothy Baker was originally published in 1962. It has now been re-published by the New York Review of Books Classics Series and made available to today’s audience. This is an intense story about the relationship between two twin sisters, one of whom is about to get married.

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. ( )
  DeltaQueen50 | Jan 5, 2024 |
Incredible writing. ( )
  booksinbed | Sep 28, 2023 |
incredible. ( )
  femmedyke | Sep 27, 2023 |
Cassandra and Judith Edwards are identical twins with two very different personalities. This short novel is a character study of their disparate personalities told from their two points of view.

Cassandra is a graduate student at Berkeley, who returns home for Judith's wedding to a seemingly ideal young doctor. Cassandra's hope when she returns is to sabotage the wedding. Cassandra seems to be very self-absorbed and hates that the other half to her whole is going to be someone else's half. Her ultimate attempt to interfere with the wedding is a remarkable example of her selfishness. Their mother died two years before the wedding day, and their father is a pompous, alcoholic philosophy professor. Their maternal grandmother lives in the home, and adds a gracious, if slightly unaware presence.

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. ( )
  pdebolt | Aug 27, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 23 (next | show all)
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Baker, Dorothyprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Eisenberg, DeborahAfterwordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Turner, LowriIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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In Memoriam
David Park
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I told them I could be free by the twenty-first, and that I'd come home the twenty-second.
Quotations
It had more to do with belonging to a tradition in music and staying in it and working at in in any capacity you can fit into - playing what's being written, and what's been written, composing too if you want to and can, but mostly trying to keep it alive and separate the chaff from the grain and keep them separate. Know which is which, and care, and that's a life work.
He quit teaching because it irked him to have to meet appointments - to shave by the clock and put on a tie and arrive at a particular place at a particular time over and over. It wasn't that way in Athens. A teacher in the golden age could stay in his bath however long he happened to wish to, and when he got out, some youth would be there with a towel and dry him off, and by the time he was dry and robed, the work would have got around and the young men would have gathered to question and to be questioned and end up convinced that the unexamined life is not worth living. We were raised that way ourselves; our father was Socrates, we were the youth and we sat at his feet.
Either this or that. But. But I'd never try to have it both ways, I'd never, I swear I'd never choose to come home with a stranger and enact before our household gods the brutal double ceremony of the destruction of Athens and the founding of something that could never at its best equal it. Or come anywhere near it. Or be spoken of in the same breath. From heights you can only descend. Ask anyone. Ask me, preferably.
I hadn't thought about it as being anything peculiar, because I was going home, and one of the things about belonging somewhere is that you can go there without permission because it's where you belong. But did I? Did I belong, at such a time, where plans were being made and questions of policy being decided, matters of great moment like for example do they have sterling silver of stainless steel?
But I seldom get praised for the hard things I do, and I do some of the hardest things. Things like waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night, all all alone except when I'm with someone; and it's getting harder and harder for me to be really with anyone.
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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.

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"By the time I went back into the bedroom I had my mind made up. As I said, it wasn't really hard, because I couldn't stand what was going to happen, and I knew I couldn't, not now, keep it from happening. So go, girl. We should have been one person all along, not two..."
It is the hottest June 21st since 1912, and the longest day of the year. Casandra Edwards-tormented, intelligent, mordantly witty - leaves her doctoral thesis and her Berkeley flat to drive through the scorching heat to her family's ranch. There they are all assembled: her philosopher father smelling so sweetly of five-star Hennessey, her kind, fussy grandmother, her beloved, her identical, her inseparable (soon to be separated) twin sister Judith. For the occasion is Judith's marriage to a young Connecticut doctor; though it won't be if Cassandra can help it ...
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NYRB Classics

3 editions of this book were published by NYRB Classics.

Editions: 1590171128, 1590176014, 159017612X

 

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