Reader Score
82%
82% of readers
recommend this book
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 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.
Deborah Eisenberg is the author of four collections of short stories and a play. She is the winner of the 2000 Rea Award for the Short Story, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and five O. Henry Awards. She lives in New York City.
"I was moved by the women’s delicate relationships with their father and grandmother, and by the oblique but unsubtle depiction of the compromises involved in striking out on one’s own. This is an ideal beach read—all the better if you live someplace where the beaches are cold."
Founder/Publisher of @womenahollywood which educates, advocates and agitates for gender equality and inclusion. Artistic Director of Athena Film Festival.
Sarah DeLappe to Adapt Dorothy Baker Novel “Cassandra at the Wedding” for Neon https://t.co/VpaAhPMwJh https://t.co/yUZ6WNAhUJ
Natalie Portman is an actor.
First published in 1962, the novel follows Cassandra, a queer Berkeley grad student intent on sabotaging her twin sister’s wedding. The book was recently rereleased and rediscovered, and I am among its ardent fans. Hope you love it as much as I do. #JuneBookPick @natsbookclub
"Knowing, wise and a cracking read." --Irish Independent
"An important achievement...intoxicating fun." -- Lillian Smith
"[Baker's] ear for dialogue is acute, her prose immaculate...this is a novel of exceptional quality." -- Times Literary Supplement
"I--whose usual bed time is ten o'clock--stayed up all night reading that exquisite Cassandra at the Wedding--dazzled by the pyrotechnics of such an artist. I can only think back to Young Man with a Horn, and be overwhelmed by Dorothy Baker's continuing brilliance." -- Carson McCullers
"Dorothy Baker's Cassandra at the Wedding (New York Review Books, 2004) is another novel in which it's hard not to be caught up from the very first page by the first--person voice of the speaker. Originally published in 1962, this is the compulsively readable story of Cassandra's unwilling trip home to attend (or prevent) her twin sister Judith's wedding. She's one of those neurotic, intellegent women, trying to understand the direction her life has taken. Long out of print, this is just one of the wonderful titles (both fiction and non--fiction) brought back to life by a publishing company whose mission, according to editor Edwin Frank, is to rescue some of the many truly remarkable works of literature that have had the misfortune of falling out of print." -- Nancy Pearl, The Beat, KUOW 94.9 FM Seattle NPR
"Belongs with Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and McCullers's Member of the Wedding as a modern American classic." - Georgia Hammick
"A brilliantly told story...remarkably subtle...inexporably lucid." - The New York Times