The movie Fried Green Tomatoes has always been a favorite of mine, so I finally decided to pick up the book.

I love this story, but knowing the movie so well, I really didn't need to read the book too. Still absolutely enjoyed it.

I decided to listen to the audio version of this book after hearing the recommendation from a friend at one of my book groups. Since I had not seen the movie, I had very little idea what this book was really about. It took a bit of adjusting to switch from the Weams Weekly to the Whistlestop Cafe to the Rose Terrace Nursing Home and more. . . Round and round it went with other locations being added. On top of it all, the book was not at all chronological. That did allow the author to give a variety of perspectives -- sometimes past, present and future on many of the events.

The folksy feel of Lorna Raver's narration was a treat and I did enjoy the southern charm that oozed from every chapter. There were many very dear relationships that were shown with a diverse cast of characters. I am anxious to see the movie and see some of these dear folks captured on the big screen.

Reading Road Trip 2020

Current location: Alabama

I feel like I'm living like a rat these days, with my own little rat's nest off to the side of my bed where I have stacks of books lined up for my reading road trip project and little post-it notes of feverishly scribbled messages, things I'm supposed to remember.

On one of these notes is written: “Nietzsche: A human being is a going-across.”
On another: “John Lennon: Whatever gets you thru the night.”

I wrote them both, while reading this book.

A human being is a going-across? What, like a bridge? Now that makes me scribble another note: “Richard Bach: The bridge across forever.”

I don't know if we are a bridge across forever. . . I'd like to think so, but the people of this story remind us. . . we are a going-across. . . whether we want to be or not, and we are not HERE forever, wherever we go, and we are certainly going to need more than a handful of ways to get us through the night, knowing all that.

So, what are the ways? What is it that gets us through the night? Through the bad marriage? Poor health? The death of a child? A pandemic?

Well, the characters of this book will tell you: praying, fucking, dancing, singing, drinking, eating, writing, killing, talking, cooking, walking, reading, gardening. . . and crying.

Sound about right?

Everything is here, y'all. Everything you ever knew and ever thought you wanted to know.

This stupid looking book, with its kitschy cover and its hokey title, just about knocked the wind out of me this week.

It's an examination of our evolution and our degradation, a glimpse of small town, Southern, American life. . . where every type of person, every type of relationship, every problem, is fairly represented.

And could happen anywhere.

Do not judge this book by its cover or location. It's a book about people getting through the night.

You'll never know how many times I've thought about you and wished I could speak to you. I felt so bad I didn't get to see you before you died. I just never dreamed in a million years that I would never see you again. I never did get a chance to thank you. If it hadn't been for you talking to me like you did. . . I don't know what I would have done.

What a delightful read!! Full of southern charm and wonderful characters from the small rural town of Whistle Stop near Birmingham, AL. The story weaves back & forth through time from the 1920s-80s, not chronologically nor a true dual-timeline format, but as primarily memories of a long-time resident.

Evelyn Crouch has come to the Rose Terrace Nursing Home with her husband to visit her mother-in-law. She finds she has no patience and wanders into a lounge where she meets quite a chatterbox in 86-year-old Ninny Threadgoode and thus the trip to Whistle Stop begins and what a ride it is!! Ninny doesn't just unspool town lore, she also gives out advice and pearls of wisdom. In discussing how she met & married her husband, she related a common concern about Cleo being the right one and made this observation: I just wonder how many people never get the one they want, and wind up with the one they're supposed to be with. Anyhow when I look back on all the years of happiness I had with Cleo and think that I could have turned him away, it just makes me shudder.
Also, the story is interspersed with small sections of the local paper written in a conversational tone by Dot Weems. They are too funny. An example of one news item circa 1939: The man that was in town a couple of weeks ago, selling those religious sewing machines that were supposed to heal you as you sewed, was arrested in Birmingham. It seems that the machines were not from France, but were made outside of Chattanooga, & were not religious at all. Biddies Louise Otis is very upset, because she thought the one she bought had helped her arthritis a lot. Tee hee.

Oh, I have to share one other story that made me laugh out loud. Ninny was relating how a group of friends used to get together to drink and have fun telling tales. Sipsey's contribution: She told them about this woman she was helping who was having trouble giving birth, and how she gave her a tablespoon of snuff and she said that woman sneezed so hard that she shot that baby clear across the bed and into the other room... Homespun and heartfelt.

The book is a treat and you will fall in love with th residents of Whistle Stop and their small town lives.

And there's something else want you to remember. There are magnificent beings on this earth, son, that are walking around posing as humans. And I don't ever want you to forget that.

I had heard of this book because of its depiction of a cutesy lesbian relationship, but upon finally actually reading it, I’ve found that the book’s racism far outweighs any of its positive qualities.

The Black characters in this book have no agency or complexity. They basically live to serve their white employers (the protagonists/heroes). The Black characters’ singleminded devotion to the white women in this book, above even their devotion to their own families or their own lives/safety, is genuinely unbelievable. It basically serves to paint the white protagonists of the story as “good whites,” without any attention or respect paid to actual, real Black folks’ experience of this time period and what their relationship to their white employers would actually have been.

There’s one part, though, that really got me: a (minor) Black character, a soldier, who is shown coming home in a coffin. As a reader, my first thought was that he died in combat. But no, it turns out he was killed in a bar fight with a fellow Black soldier. Guess why they were fighting? The fellow soldier called our guy’s father a fool for working for white people all these years. This author seriously made a Black character die defending his father’s loyalty to white folks. This added nothing whatsoever to the plot—it’s pure racist propaganda.

Also, the story’s hero, Idgie, is a literal white saviour in multiple instances, but at the same time she refers to Black people collectively by the N-word, and her best friend (also a good guy in the story) is in the KKK. There is no criticism of her for her racism in the book, not even from the white women characters who are set fifty years in the future, who talk about Idgie at length in the book’s frame narrative.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I guess this should not be a surprise, coming from a 1980s white woman writer trying to depict Depression-era Alabama. The whole story is overbearingly steeped in a whitewashed, ahistorical nostalgia for “the good old days” of the South—it doesn’t even have the decency to consider whether they were “good old days” for its Black characters, too.

I honestly enjoyed the writing style, and Idgie and Ruth’s initial romance was really cute to read. But in the end, the white author’s complete inability to give her Black characters the humanity and dignity they deserve ruins the book for me. She is far too concerned with clinging to a patently false, harmful narrative of white innocence. As such, I would not recommend this book to anybody.

Hace varios años que aguantaba las ganas de ver la adaptación de este libro con el fin de leerlo primero. Ahora, habiendo podido hacer las dos cosas, estaba deseando hablaros sobre este precioso relato. Fue en 1987 cuando se publicó la obra de Fannie Flagg, que por cierto cuenta con una continuación que según tengo entendido fue todo un fracaso y por ello no alcanzó la fama de su predecesora.

La historia de “Tomates verdes fritos” nos presenta a Evelyn Couch, una mujer que semanalmente va a visitar a su intratable suegra en la residencia de ancianos donde habita. Tras varios desencuentros, conoce a una anciana llamada Ninny, quien comenzará a relatarle historias del pequeño pueblo dónde vivía llamado Whistle Stop en Alabama. Así aparecerán Idgie, Ruth, su cafetería (que será el eje central de la novela) y una buena suma de personajes admirables.

Fannie Flagg crea un ambiente mágico, ligero con una atmósfera emocional y puramente sentimental. Su estilo es simple, pero gracias a la originalidad del escrito y la maravillosa idea de hacer de esta una novela epistolar con fragmentos alternos, testimonios diferentes, recortes de periódicos e incluso recetas con saltos temporales crea en conjunto una obra entretenida, graciosa, peculiar y entrañable.

Lo maravilloso de este libro es la singularidad de sus personajes, el buen rollo que transmite la trama, las pequeñas anécdotas que se cuentan dentro de la historia pero sobre todo la manera en la que se estructura la obra. Es un libro que evade, del que es necesario ir sin expectativas salvo a la espera de pasar una placentera experiencia lectora y no buscando una obra maestra narrativamente perfecta.

En definitiva, esta es una bonita historia de amistad, de una lucha racial incesante que toca temas delicados y profundos de una manera que no incomoda al lector. Si buscas tener una lectura “feel good”, con unas protagonistas entrañables para llevar siempre en el corazón y después deleitarte con una adaptación cinematográfica a la altura sin duda te recomiendo darle una oportunidad.

My reading of this book has a weird story that goes with it. In 1989 my grandmother came to stay with me while my mom was traveling somewhere for a chunk of time. I don't know where or for how long, but that's immaterial. I was a senior in high school and there was this little "women's bookstore" a couple of towns away, meaning I could find lesbian stuff, which was highly sought after by my newly-out pre-internet self. There were other stores on that particular Main Street, so it didn't seem strange that I would be asking my grandmother to drive me there to "do some shopping". After arriving, she went off to some 5 and dime or something while I beelined it for the lesbians. I browsed for quite a while, soaking in all that womyn's energy and looking for something to buy. I already had picked up a couple of magazines and wanted a book, too. I picked up book after book, reading the back and seeing if I might want it. When Fried Green Tomatoes was in my hands...my grandmother walked in to get me. That's the book I bought. Good thing I really, really liked it. I was supremely excited when it was made into a movie. While the movie wasn't as good as the book (at the time; it's now a beloved film) it starred Mary Stuart Masterson which really, really helped me get over that.

My Goodreads friend just read this book...

I'm having memories of it ---AND the wonderful movie!

“You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.”

After catching the movie on Netflix, I was bitten by the reading bug and decided to hunt this one down, see how it holds up, what’s different and what’s better.

I found it to be a charming book of friendship and personal growth. Told mainly through the stories of Mrs. Threadgoode in the nursing home, she goes back and forth between memories, from dull things like her cat and family dinners, to intriguing things such as murdered men and domestic violence.

Evelyn was an excellent character – she was weak-willed, submissive, so being in her head was interesting. If she didn’t change in the end, then I doubt the author would have had the nerve to write about a woman like that.

She was stuck in the proper fifties mindset of what a proper wife and woman was supposed to be, but her self-esteem was fragile and flawed, making a realistic character rather than a stereotype. When she started coming into her own, I was mixed between being amused to being alarmed she was actually losing her mind. Seriously – she was becoming demented from menopause. Thankfully Mrs. Threadgoode told her about those pills…

This is a rare case where the book and movie are on par with each other. There are some differences, such as an obvious closeness between Ruth and Idgie that is clearly a lesbian relationship, but most of the story stayed the same.

The book wins with personal introspection and making Evelyn the more interesting of the bunch, but the movie wins with emotional tragedy when it came to Ruth’s ending. In book form it just didn’t carry the same oomph – strangely the murder scene was also downplayed and didn’t seem shocking written down. It read as an afterthought and minor point of the story.

Sometimes my interest failed, especially with rambling of unimportant things, but the quirky Mrs. Threadgoode was fun to listen to. She had a solid way of looking at life with her viewpoints were expressed humorously. At the end there is a change with her over the movie too, which had a different note of what she brought to Evelyn’s life. In the movie she was still needed in the same role to continue the protagonist’s evolvement, but in the book form she’d finished her work and the masterpiece was complete.

This is at least 90% chick-lit.

Overall Rating

3.5

I enjoyed this. It was fun, though perhaps not a favorite.

Review in a hurry

I have about an hour to review this book before my library ebook expires, so this will have to be quick.

Timelines

The story has two timelines. One is between the 1910s and the 1950s in Whistle Stop, a small railroad town on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama. Some of the story takes place in Birmingham as well.
Also the surrounding area. (There's some action in Georgia and Chicago as well).

The other timeline is in the mid-nineteen eighties in the Birmingham area. Much of the story in this timeline takes place in the Rose Terrace Nursing Home as Virginia "Ninny" Threadgoode, a sweet natured elderly lady, regales Evelyn Couch, a middle aged housewife who initially came to the nursing home to visit her mother-in-law, with tales of the Threadgoode family and its associates starting in the 1910s.


Characters

The memorable characters are what made this book.

It's a tale of Southern eccentrics.

Front and center is Idgie Threadgoode, the irrespressible lesbian hellion who runs the Whistle Stop Cafe during the depression. Idgie doesn't care about money and is generous to a fault, feeding the hoboes that pass through the town on the railroad for free.

There are many other compelling characters. They also had memorable names, like Naughty Bird, Big George, Stump, Grady Kilgore, etc.

Evelyn Couch, herself, initially a depressed, overweight middle aged housewife who has no idea what she wants in life, is another character (as we find out over time). Her friendship with the elderly Ninny Threadgoode transforms Evelyn.

There is Sipsey, the old black cook at the Whistle Stop Cafe, whose cooking is so good it draws people from miles around. Her cooking includes local Southern specialties like collard and turnip greens, buttermilk biscuits, fried green tomatoes, coconut cream pie, Southern fried chicken, skillet cornbread, fried okra, candied yams, fried catfish, grits, etc. (There's even a recipe section at the back of the book).

There's Artis O. Peavey, flashy dresser, African-American man about town in Birmingham.

There are lots of others including small town eccentrics, railway employees, inhabitants of the glittering black section of Birmingham ("Slagtown") and of the not-so-glittering "Troutville" black shanty town near Whistle Stop.

The friendships between the characters are memorable.

Local Newspapers

The first timeline was a time when local newspapers were important.

Another way of framing the story and letting us know what's happening comes from "The Weems Weekly, Whistle Stop Alabama's Weekly Bulletin", an (inadvertently) comical collection of small town trivia and Dot Weems' humorous complaints about her annoying husband.

Still other information comes from stories in the Valdosta, Georgia "Courier" and from the African-American newpaper in Birmingham, "The Slagtown News Flotsam and Jetsam".

Story

The book is really a collection of stories (many quite funny) describing the lives of the various characters.

Setting

Obviously, the Deep South is almost a character in the story, especially in the earlier timeline.

Racism

I think Erica makes a valid point in her review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Yes, the story is racist. Including some of the black characters' unthinking devotion to white people like Idgie (although it must be said that this devotion was earned, as Idgie is more than kind to the black people who work for her--including standing up to the Ku Klux Klan).

But I think things have to be viewed in context of time and place.

Of course the Deep South in the 1910s to 1950s time frame was racist.

And yes, Alabama in the mid eighties was also racist.

But the book is still worth reading in spite of that.

Feminism

The story is supportive of independent women, as Erica also points out in her review.

There's a lesbian couple at the center of the story, the two women who run the Whistle Stop Cafe. (The lesbianism is implied, not explicit, but it's pretty clear).

Evelyn, the depressed housewife, starts making her own money successfully selling Mary Kay cosmetics. Ok, this is a kind of retro career, but take that in context of the time and place and where she started (as a stay-at-home wife).

How Involved I was In the Book

This was fun to read, although perhaps not absolutely compelling.

My interest dipped a bit at around the 70 or 80 percent mark, as things seems to lag and become a bit repetitive.

But I regained interest again further on and until the end.

Movie

I can't comment on the movie, as I haven't seen it.

However, I can imagine that this would make a very good movie (perhaps one of those rare instances where the movie is better than the book). Most of the scenes in the book are very cinematic. Unsurprisingly, the author,  Fannie Flagg worked in film and television.

Audio Narrator

Actress Lorna Raver is the perfect audio reader for this book. Her grasp of Southern diction is impeccable.

Една от тези книги, които обявявам безапелационно за уютна, човечна, човеколюбива и ведра! Наистина е топла, мила книга, с добри, сърдечни герои, които искаш да познаваш, да са ти приятели. А Уисъл Стоп е заведенийцето на моите мечти - прекрасна храна и ''пухкава'' атмосфера. Много ме радваха историите, героите, нравите, случките, характерите, мъдростта, мислите, любовта, разбирателство, съпричасността между хората, истинската доброта и една осезаема лекота на живота. Все неща, чиято липса е все по-явна в сегашния живот и всичко е заменено от самота и отчуждение. Книгата ми напомни с лекия си стил, и дълбоките, ярки образи на хора, места и атмосфери на Марк Твен и Стайнбек. Онези разказвачи, които ми образуват тъга по това спокойствие и вътрешен мир. Адски зареждаща книга!
Обичам американските разказвачи и обичам голямата им безкрайна Америка, с огромните им безкрайни истории за онази полезна и липсваща простота на живота и простите взаимоотношенията.



n  Не бива да се отдаваш на тъгата, защото тя ще те разболее по-бързо от всичко друго на света.

Не се знае какво носи човек в сърцето си докато не бъде подложен на изпитание.

Е, това е. Заминавам и ако не ми вярваш, просто брой дните, в които ме няма. Когато телефонът не звъни, да знаеш, че съм аз и не ти се обаждам.

Онези, които най-много страдат, казват най-малко.n

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