Carson McCullers is a writer of undoubted sensibility and talent who seems to have difficulty in adjusting her abilities to a dramatically effective subject…. ["The Member of the Wedding"] has no element of drama at all.

The whole book is a formless chronicle of Frankie's musings as she walks about the town, and of her interminable conversations in the kitchen with the maid and the little cousin. These kitchen scenes are very well done in the sense that they create an atmosphere and that the characters are droll and natural: the maid is particularly good; the way she is made to talk is perfect. But they have no internal structure and do not build up to anything. The whole story seems utterly pointless….

I hope that I am not being stupid about this book, which has left me feeling rather cheated. (p. 87)

Edmund Wilson, "Two Books that Leave...