97. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

Pages: 394
Finished: May 29, 2008
First Published: 1987
Genre: Southern Fiction
Rating: 5/5

Reason for Reading: Southern Fiction Challenge

First sentence:

The Whistle Stop Cafe opened last week, right next door to me at the post office, and owners Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison said business has been good ever since.

Comments: Evelyn Couch goes to the nursing home with her husband as he visits his mother ever week. Evelyn quickly gives her best wishes and then hurries out to the waiting room. It is here that she meets Ninny Threadgoode, an 86 year old woman who starts talking from the second Evelyn sits down. Ninny talks about the past, not her life, but the life of all the people she used to know and especially Idgie and Ruth two very special friends. Evelyn becomes caught up in this story and ultimately her life is changed forever.

The story is told through very short chapters that move back and forth through time. There are several narratives: the past, the present and local newsletters and newspapers. We follow the Threadgoode family and all their kin and townsfolk from the late 1920s through the 1980s.

This is absolutely a beautiful, wonderful, funny, heartwarming, story. Not much really happens plotwise, it's just a story of the lives of a group of people. The characters are just so truly wonderful I could not put the book down and when I had finished I was so sorry it was over. It's a story of good times and bad times, white folks and black folks, deaths and accidents, the young'uns and the old folks and how all together these things are a part of life. Wonderful book. Read it.