If you are not familiar with the Emily Books Book Club, or simply have that condition where you struggle to form short-term memories, you may click here. Maybe you already did!
Well, another month is here, and another chance to do your background reading for Nicole and Emily’s rambling gchats about literature is upon us. We’ll be discussing CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING, by Dorothy Baker. As always, you can find your discount code at the bottom of this post, and you have a couple of weeks to get your shit together and read the book. Now, what’s the deal with this one? Emily says it’s a beach read, but with overdoses and sexual identity crises! “Fun in the sun!”
Cassandra at the Wedding is about Cassandra, the witty, high-maintenance, suicidal, gay identical twin of conventional, practical, family-minded Judith. The twins, after a period of creepily-extreme intimacy that lasted into their early twenties, have gone their separate ways, but now they’re reuniting at their family’s California ranch for Judith’s wedding, an intimate family affair that Cassandra is bound to ruin one way or another. In sections that alternate masterfully between the twins’ voices, Dorothy Baker reveals the inner workings of the kind of family a female Wes Anderson might invent: rich, weird, literate, boozy and tilting glamorously but darkly out of control. Originally published in 1962, the book illustrates and subverts the conventions of its time, while anticipating, in Cassandra, literary anti-heroines who were soon to join her ranks.
Well, we’re game. Let’s do this.
Readers of The Toast can take 20% off purchases from Emily Books — subscriptions or individual books — by entering the code CASSIETOAST at checkout until 8/15.
Tags: books, cassandra at the wedding, emily books book club
Yes, I love (creepy) (aren’t they all) twin stories!! Maybe I’ll participate this month!
Tell me all your favorite twin stories. Mine is probably The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.
I recommed this to literally everyone, but Among Others by Jo Walton is a great speculative fiction story involving twins.
Half Life (Shelley Jackson), which is…probably definitely ableist/othering*, and maybe not actually good, but creepy! And about twins!
*The Last Enemy That Shall Be Defeated is using physical/mental atypicality to explore The Human Condition (looking at you, Will Eno).
I don’t think it’s a popular opinion but I really enjoyed Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger.
I loved that too!!! I know a lot of people didn’t, but TWINS man.
and Victorian Cemeteries!!!
If anyone has book suggestions for people who dig Victorian cemeteries in fiction, I am all ears.
but…. It’s already August 8th! do we just get the one day for the code? oh dear.
HA, that was the last code. Updated to reflect the glorious end-of-August expiration of this one.
Yesssss, my library has this. Creepy psychological fiction! Twins! Yes.
Creepy twins AND wedding disasters?? Yes absolutely put it in my face
I’m *so* game.
YES. I actually just finished reading this last month! Excellent choice.
YES. I actually just finished reading this last month! Excellent choice.
I read it right after SISTERLAND by Curtis Sittenfeld … creepy twins ftw!!
EMILY, what did you think about SISTERLAND? My friend, who loves CS, like me, thought it was worth it for the quality of the writing about women’s lives and friendships, but the plot was too weird and not in a good way to carry the book.
Surprise surprise, I loved it (like you and your friend, I love CS) and I just had a conversation with a friend about the “plot too weird” issue — she agrees with your friend! (I swear our friends are both real people) and I ended up defending the plot, which she called “a weird excuse for her to talk about all these [interesting] things.” And I was like, but what else are plots?!?! My mom is reading it now and I’m dying to hear what she thinks. She’s not a twin but she is the more conventional of two close-in-age sisters — more Judith than Cassandra (this will make sense after you read Cassandra) and I am curious to know whether Sisterland resonated. Nicole, read them both for our book club?!
DEAL, buying immediately.
Another creepy twins story: Fossil Figures by Joyce Carol Oates (is she ever not creepy?) in Neil Gaiman-edited short story anthology Stories: All New Tales.
I will buy anything with an afterword by Deborah Eisenberg! I’m in.
Sweet. Just loved it.
I will buy this book and read all the details inside it.