Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Title: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Author: Fannie Flagg
Published: 1987, this Vintage edition is from 1992
Genre: Historical aww
Pages: 395 plus some recipes!


Oh, this poor little book! Its previous owners have treated it so poorly, it has even been burned in places! Poor thing... you're safe now. Anyway! When I was a kid, I saw this movie with lots of women, Julia Roberts one of them, and for years I kept confusing that movie with Fried Green Tomatoes. But because of the first movie kind of made me go Ecch as I grew up, I never watched this one, not until last year/early this year when I realised what a mistake I'd made. And that's a damn shame!

The story is set in two times: we've got 1986, where, at the Rose Terrace Nursing Home, 86-year old Ninny Threadgoode starts telling about life in the thirties to Evelyn Couch, who just happened to sit beside her in the visitor's lounge. Evelyn and her husband visit his mother there every week, and since she doesn't get along with her mother-in-law, Evelyn soon befriends Ninny, who keeps telling her stories, happy to have someone to talk to.

And then there's the past, in a small railway town called Whistle Stop. Now, they've changed some things for the movie, but the book, guys, gals, it's got bees! And lesbians! In 1930's Alabama, no less! Two women, living together, raising a kid, and no-one bats an eye. And there's the great depression and the KKK and things are pretty bad for you in general unless you're a white man, but the book is still so full of hope and joy. It was just a pleasure to read.


   Ruth leaned down and whispered in her ear, "You're an old bee charmer, Idgie Threadgoode, that's what you are..."
   Idgie smiled back at her and looked up into the clear blue sky that reflected in her eyes, and she was as happy as anybody who is in love in the summertime can be.