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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Paperback – January 21, 1997
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Praise for Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
“A real novel and a good one [from] the busy brain of a born storyteller.”—The New York Times
“Happily for us, Fannie Flagg has preserved [the Threadgoodes] in a richly comic, poignant narrative that records the exuberance of their lives, the sadness of their departure.”—Harper Lee
“This whole literary enterprise shines with honesty, gallantry, and love of perfect details that might otherwise be forgotten.”—Los Angeles Times
“Funny and macabre.”—The Washington Post
“Courageous and wise.”—Houston Chronicle
Review
be. If you put an ear to the pages, you can almost hear the characters
speak. The writer's imaginative skill transforms simple, everyday events
into complex happenings that take on universal meanings."
--Chattanooga Times
"This whole literary enterprise shines with honesty, gallantry, and love
of perfect details that might otherwise be forgotten."
--Los Angeles Times
"A sparkling gem."
--Birmingham News
"Watch out for Fannie Flagg. When I walked into the Whistle Stop Cafe she
fractured my funny bone, drained my tear ducts, and stole my heart."
--Florence King, Author of Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
"Admirers of the wise child in Flagg's first novel, Coming Attractions,
will find her grown-up successor, Idgie, equally appealing. The book's
best character, perhaps, is the town of Whistle Stop itself--too bad
trains don't stop there anymore."
--Publisher's Weekly
From the Publisher
be. If you put an ear to the pages, you can almost hear the characters
speak. The writer's imaginative skill transforms simple, everyday events
into complex happenings that take on universal meanings."
--Chattanooga Times
"This whole literary enterprise shines with honesty, gallantry, and love
of perfect details that might otherwise be forgotten."
--Los Angeles Times
"A sparkling gem."
--Birmingham News
"Watch out for Fannie Flagg. When I walked into the Whistle Stop Cafe she
fractured my funny bone, drained my tear ducts, and stole my heart."
--Florence King, Author of Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
"Admirers of the wise child in Flagg's first novel, Coming Attractions,
will find her grown-up successor, Idgie, equally appealing. The book's
best character, perhaps, is the town of Whistle Stop itself--too bad
trains don't stop there anymore."
--Publisher's Weekly
From the Inside Flap
now-classic novel of two women in the 1980s; of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to
Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women--of the
irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth--who back in the thirties ran a little place in
Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present--for Evelyn and for us--will never be quite the same again...
"Airplanes and television have removed the Threadgoodes from the Southern scene. Happily for us, Fannie Flagg has preserved a whole community of them in a richly comic, poignant narrative that records the exuberance of their lives, the sadness of their departure. Idgie Threadgoode is a true original: Huckleberry Finn would have tried to marry her!"
--Harper Lee, Author of To Kill a Mockingbird
"A real novel and a good one... [from] the busy brain of a born storyteller."
--The New York Times
"It's very good, in fact, just wonderful."
--Los Angeles Times
"Funny and macabre."
--The Washington Post
"Courageous and wise."
--Houston Chronicle
From the Back Cover
now-classic novel of two women in the 1980s; of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to
Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women--of the
irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth--who back in the thirties ran a little place in
Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present--for Evelyn and for us--will never be quite the same again...
"Airplanes and television have removed the Threadgoodes from the Southern scene. Happily for us, Fannie Flagg has preserved a whole community of them in a richly comic, poignant narrative that records the exuberance of their lives, the sadness of their departure. Idgie Threadgoode is a true original: Huckleberry Finn would have tried to marry her!"
--Harper Lee, Author of To Kill a Mockingbird
"A real novel and a good one... [from] the busy brain of a born storyteller."
--"The New York Times
"It's very good, in fact, just wonderful."
--"Los Angeles Times
"Funny and macabre."
--"The Washington Post
"Courageous and wise."
--"Houston Chronicle
About the Author
nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and a writer in
television, films, and the theater. Her first novel, Daisy Fay and The
Miracle Man, spent ten weeks on the New York Times paperback
bestseller list, and her second novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the
Whistle Stop Cafe, was on the same list for thirty-six weeks. It was
produced by Universal Pictures as the feature film Fried Green
Tomatoes. Flagg's script was nominated for both the Writers Guild of
America and an Academy Award, and it won the highly regarded
Scripters Award. Flagg narrated both novels on audiocassette and
received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word.
Her latest novel is titled Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! She lives
in California and Alabama.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
(WHISTLE STOP, ALABAMA'S WEEKLY BULLETIN)
June 12, 1929
Cafe Opens
The Whistle Stop Cafe opened up 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. Idgie says that for people who know
her not to worry about getting poisoned, she is not
cooking. All the cooking is being done by two colored
women, Sipsey and Onzell, and the barbecue is being
cooked by Big George, who is Onzell's husband.
If there is anybody that has not been there yet, Idgie
says that the breakfast hours are from 5:30-7:30, and you
can get eggs, grits, biscuits, bacon, sausage, ham and
red-eye gravy, and coffee for 25 [cts.].
For lunch and supper you can have: fried chicken;
pork chops and gravy; catfish; chicken and dumplings;
or a barbecue plate; and your choice of three
vegetables, biscuits or cornbread, and your drink and
dessert--for 35 [cts.].
She said the vegetables are: creamed corn; fried green
tomatoes; fried okra; collard or turnip greens; black-eyed
peas; candied yams; butter beans or lima beans.
And pie for dessert.
My other half, Wilbur, and I ate there the other night,
and it was so good he says he might not ever eat at home
again. Ha. Ha. I wish this were true. I spend all my time
cooking for the big lug, and still can't keep him filled
up.
By the way, Idgie says that one of her hens laid an egg
with a ten-dollar bill in it.
... Dot Weems ...
ROSE TERRACE NURSING HOME
OLD MONTGOMERY HIGHWAY
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
DECEMBER 15, 1985
Evelyn Couch had come to Rose Terrace with her husband, Ed,
who was visiting his mother, Big Momma, a recent but reluctant
arrival. Evelyn had just escaped them both and had gone into the
visitors' lounge in the back, where she could enjoy her candy bar in
peace and quiet. But the moment she sat down, the old woman
beside her began to talk ...
"Now, you ask me the year somebody got married ... who they
married ... or what the bride's mother wore, and nine times out of ten
I can tell you, but for the life of me, I cain't tell you when it was I
got to be so old. It just sorta slipped up on me. The first time I
noticed it was June of this year, when I was in the hospital for my
gallbladder, which they still have, or maybe they threw it out by
now ... who knows. That heavyset nurse had just given me another
one of those Fleet enemas they're so fond of over there when I
noticed what they had on my arm. It was a white band that said:
Mrs. Cleo Threadgoode ... an eighty-six-year-old woman.
Imagine that!
"When I got back home, I told my friend Mrs. Otis, I guess the
only thing left for us to do is to sit around and get ready to croak....
She said she preferred the term pass over to the
other side. Poor thing, I didn't have the heart to tell her that no
matter what you call it, we're all gonna croak, just the same ...
"It's funny, when you're a child you think time will never go by,
but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you're on the fast
train to Memphis. I guess life just slips up on everybody. It sure
did on me. One day I was a little girl and the next I was a grown
woman, with bosoms and hair on my private parts. I missed the
whole thing. But then, I never was too smart in school or otherwise ...
"Mrs. Otis and I are from Whistle Stop, a little town about ten
miles from here, out by the railroad yards.... She's lived down the
street from me for the past thirty years or so, and after her husband
died, her son and daughter-in-law had a fit for her to come and live
at the nursing home, and they asked me to come with her. I told
them I'd stay with her for a while--she doesn't know it yet, but I'm
going back home just as soon as she gets settled in good.
"It's not too bad out here. The other day, we all got Christmas
corsages to wear on our coats. Mine had little shiny red Christmas
balls on it, and Mrs. Otis had a Santy Claus face on hers. But I was
sad to give up my kitty, though.
"They won't let you have one here, and I miss her. I've always
had a kitty or two, my whole life. I gave her to that little girl next
door, the one who's been watering my geraniums. I've got me four
cement pots on the front porch, just full of geraniums.
"My friend Mrs. Otis is only seventy-eight and real sweet, but
she's a nervous kind of person. I had my gallstones in a Mason jar
by my bed, and she made me hide them. Said they made her
depressed. Mrs. Otis is just a little bit of somethin', but as you can
see, I'm a big woman. Big bones and all.
"But I never drove a car ... I've been stranded most all my life.
Always stayed close to home. Always had to wait for somebody to
come and carry me to the store or to the doctor or down to the
church. Years ago, you used to be able to take a trolley to
Birmingham, but they stopped running a long time
ago. The only thing I'd do different if I could go back would be to
get myself a driver's license.
"You know, it's funny what you'll miss when you're away from
home. Now me, I miss the smell of coffee ... and bacon frying in the
morning. You cain't smell anything they've got cooking out here,
and you cain't get a thing that's fried. Everything here is boiled up,
with not a piece of salt on it! I wouldn't give you a plugged nickel
for anything boiled, would you?"
The old lady didn't wait for an answer ".... I used to love
my crackers and buttermilk, or my buttermilk and cornbread,
in the afternoon. I like to smash it all up in my glass and eat
it with a spoon, but you cain't eat in public like you can at home
... can you? ... And I miss wood.
"My house is nothing but just a little old railroad shack of a
house, with a living room, bedroom, and a kitchen. But it's wood,
with pine walls inside. Just what I like. I don't like a plaster wall.
They seem ... oh, I don't know, kinda cold and stark-like.
"I brought a picture with me that I had at home, of a girl in a
swing with a castle and pretty blue bubbles in the background, to
hang in my room, but that nurse here said the girl was naked from
the waist up and not appropriate. You know, I've had that picture
for fifty years and I never knew she was naked. If you ask me, I
don't think the old men they've got here can see well enough to
notice that she's bare-breasted. But, this is a Methodist home, so
she's in the closet with my gallstones.
"I'll be glad to get home.... Of course, my house is a mess. I
haven't been able to sweep for a while. I went out and threw my
broom at some old, noisy bluejays that were fighting and, wouldn't
you know it, my broom stuck up there in the tree. I've got to get
someone to get it down for me when I get back.
"Anyway, the other night, when Mrs. Otis's son took us home
from the Christmas tea they had at the church, he drove us over the
railroad tracks, out by where the cafe used to be, and on up First
Street, right past the old Threadgoode place. Of course, most of the
house is all boarded up and falling down now, but when we came
down the street, the headlights hit the
windows in such a way that, just for a minute, that house looked to
me just like it had so many of those nights, some seventy years
ago, all lit up and full of fun and noise. I could hear people
laughing, and Essie Rue pounding away at the piano in the parlor;
`Buffalo Gal, Won't You Come Out Tonight' or `The Big Rock Candy
Mountain,' and I could almost see Idgie Threadgoode sitting in the
chinaberry tree, howling like a dog every time Essie Rue tried to
sing. She always said that Essie Rue could sing about as well as a
cow could dance. I guess, driving by that house and me being so
homesick made me go back in my mind ...
"I remember it just like it was yesterday, but then I don't think
there's anything about the Threadgoode family I don't remember.
Good Lord, I should, I've lived right next door to them from the day
I was born, and I married one of the boys.
"There were nine children, and three of the girls, Essie Rue and
the twins, were more or less my own age, so I was always over
there playing and having spend-the-night parties. My own mother
died of consumption when I was four, and when my daddy died, up
in Nashville, I just stayed on for good. I guess you might say the
spend-the-night party never ended..."
- Print length448 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBallantine Books
- Publication dateJanuary 21, 1997
- Dimensions5.48 x 0.74 x 8.24 inches
- ISBN-100449911357
- ISBN-13978-0449911358
- Lexile measure940L
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Product details
- Publisher : Ballantine Books; Reissue edition (January 21, 1997)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 448 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0449911357
- ISBN-13 : 978-0449911358
- Lexile measure : 940L
- Item Weight : 12.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.48 x 0.74 x 8.24 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #66,556 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #661 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #1,532 in Family Saga Fiction
- #5,453 in Literary Fiction (Books)
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About the author
FANNIE FLAGG began writing and producing television specials at age nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and writer in television, films, and the theater. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (which was produced by Universal Pictures as Fried Green Tomatoes), Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, and Standing in the Rainbow. Flagg's script for Fried Green Tomatoes was nominated for both the Academy and Writers Guild of America Awards and won the highly regarded Scripters Award. Flagg lives in California and in Alabama.
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For readers and movie watchers alike: be advised that the rest of this review might contain what you’d likely classify as spoilers.
For readers of the book, it was interesting to see that Vesta Adcock, whose Whistle Stop history wasn’t mentioned in the movie, turned out to be Ed’s (Evelyn’s husband) aunt. There was a lot more of the history of the Otis’s, including how Sipsey came to be Big George’s mother, Big George’s children and their eventual history, as well as Smokey Robinson’s past and what became of him. Some of which was kind of gruesome and I can see why it was left out of the movie. You also get a glimpse of Ruth's son Buddy and his family in 1986 at the end of the book, which you also won’t get in the movie. Ninny's is much more of a non-stop rambling storyteller n the book, but just like the movie she's a delight to listen to. I just imagined Jessica Tandy's voice while I read.
Idgie's brother Buddy is hit by the train while goofing around with his friends and chasing a hat on the railroad tracks, but Buddy and Ruth did not have a crush on each other, in fact they never met. Buddy was in love with a sexually free woman named Eva whose dad ran the Dill Pickle Club, which is where Idgie became a fixture after Buddy died.
While no sexual scenes are written into the book, Idgie and Ruth were clearly in romantic love with each other and wind up living together, something that is alluded to but not made clear in the movie. “You love who you love” seems to be a lesson Idgie learned from Buddy and Eva. The movie alludes to their affair with several different scenes but backs off of outright putting it out there.
Ruth has already died when Idgie goes on trial for the murder of Frank Bennett, and it’s Smokey Robinson who comes to her rescue and gets Reverend Scroggins and all the gypsy hobos to come to her aid in her murder trial. Frank Bennett was even more of a jerk in the book than in the movie and while the judge isn’t actually fooled by anybody he has reason to be glad Frank got what he had coming to him, dismiss the case and let Idgie go..
Ninny Threadgoode in the book is definitely not Idgie Threadgoode, as the movie suggests at the end. Ninny Threadgoode does make it home after Mrs. Otis dies, then you get a glimpse of 1986 Idgie and her brother Julian running a fresh foods stand at the end of the book but due to the circumstances you know Idgie is not Ninny. I read a review somewhere that made a case for the movie having Ninny and Idgie being the same person in the movie. Ninny could have wanted to keep her identity a secret while she told Evelyn about herself as the younger Idgie. In both book and movie, Ninny was “adopted” into the family, leaving her free to have a crush on Buddy and then eventually marry Cleo. Once the story was told and Evelyn was her friend, Ninny felt comfortable letting her in on her wild life as Idgie..
If you enjoyed the movie I think you can still make up your own mind which ending makes more sense and feels better to you. I really liked the movie ending much more than the book ending; it just felt warmer and more uplifting to me, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I would not recommend skipping it. As for me, I went ahead and got the extended anniversary edition DVD Fried Green Tomatoes (Extended Anniversary Edition) of the movie that has scenes left out of the movie. I enjoy both
It is a bit discomforting to read passages over and over of such casual racism even in the "enlightened" 80s part, but to pretend the otherwise in the American South setting would feel disingenuous. The unflinching acceptance of a lesbian couple is nice though. It would read as false if one half of the couple wasn't described as being both related to half the town and as almost a force of nature. Overall I'd say it feels like a decent look at small town life in the past.
I found myself looking up references to old songs, foods I've never had, plants I wasn't familiar with, and even old railroad routes. Everything I looked up turned out to be real. Even "Railroad Bill" was based on fact. These are things I wouldn't even think to ask about and I loved the fact that I was learning something new every time I chased one of those references down. I have no idea how accurate the book really is, but I never caught the author taking liberties and still managed to be a compelling story.
My one complaint is an admittedly stupid one. It's impossible to picture the main characters as anyone other than the actors from the movie. It works fine for everyone but Ninny. All the "big girl" mentions just don't fit, but no matter how much I try I just can't form any other picture of her older self and her younger self is a blank to me. So if you haven't seen the movie, maybe read the book first so you don't get "locked" into certain mental images of everyone.
I've read this book a few times now and it never fails to enchant. I can't think of anyone I'd pause to recommend this book as long as you can read it while keeping in mind it was a different time. But if you want a lesson about that you can watch how most 90s comedies treat homosexuality. Fiction doesn't always age well, but the main themes of what it means to be a woman, aging, and the ties that forge a family are as applicable now as when the book was published.
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