Book Review : Fannie Flagg Offers Tale Full of Nostalgia, Love

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg (Random House: $17.95; 348 pages)

What, Fannie Flagg write a novel? That lady with the gorgeous body and the Southern accent who seemed for a while to live her life only on or in the television set, saying kindly, witty, but certainly not very profound or serious things? That’s right. Fannie Flagg. And it’s her second novel at that. And it’s very good. In fact, just wonderful. Think of the American South, of good men and good women living meaningful lives against very hard odds. Think of the Great Depression and the world we live in today. Think of John Steinbeck, who never cared what the critics thought as long as he could create his own beautiful closed world and make people behave in it the way he wanted them to. Then think of Fannie Flagg.

Flagg creates the very little town of Whistle Stop--that really is a whistle stop--a few miles outside of the city of Birmingham, Ala. Just across the tracks from Whistle Stop (where the white folks live) is Troutville, where their black counterparts, mirror images, exist in a life even poorer than that of the aforementioned white folks, who live off the railroad, scramble for every dollar, fend off misfortune as best they can. . . .

The novel begins in December of 1985. A sad, chubby, depressed wife named Evelyn Couch tags along with her dim husband, Ed, as they visit Ed’s cranky old mom in an old folks’ home outside of Birmingham. Evelyn flees to the visitors’ lounge where she can scarf up some candy bars in peace (food, now, is her only pleasure). She is soon collared by Mrs. Ninny Threadgoode, an 86-year-old woman, who keeps herself alive by conjuring up the past. Ninny is a born storyteller: she has the sense to know that the past is sacred (though she would never be corny enough to say that). She has seen a great love story unfold, and great human beings live great lives.

Whistle Stop Cafe

Each week, now, when Evelyn visits the old folks home, she seeks out Ninny Threadgoode to hear more stories about the town of Whistle Stop, and the women who used to run the Whistle Stop Cafe. “I don’t think there’s anything about the Threadgoode family I don’t remember,” Ninny says. “Good Lord, I should, I’ve lived 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.”

A suspicious reader might dismiss all this as awkward exposition: Why not “start in the action,” as they say, and get right to the Threadgoodes themselves? But Flagg is establishing a mind-set here, of triumph through adversity. She’s also out to prove a point about storytelling in general. It’s not just that the Threadgoodes lived good lives, but that remembering their heroism may inspire heroism now.

Life was tough in the past that Ninny remembers. Boys go off for parties, and never come back. Young Buddy, the best of the Threadgoode boys, dies young, run over by a train. Idgie, his tomboy sister, is inconsolable. Then, in the course of things, the Threadgoode family has a beautiful young visitor, Ruth Jamison, who comes to stay for the summer, and Idgie falls in love. The family seems extremely cool about it; mom warning the rest of the family that young Idgie “has a crush” on Ruth, but that she doesn’t want to hear a single teasing word about it. It surely won’t matter in the great scheme of things, because Ruth is slated to marry young Frank Barnett and live over the border in Georgia.

Idgie Knows Real Love

Except that Idgie knows real love when she sees it. And Frank Barnett turns out to be a wife beater. After five years, a truckload of Threadgoodes bring Ruth back to Whistle Stop where she and Idgie open the cafe to make a living for themselves and Ruth’s little boy. The family accepts Ruth with a minimum of fuss: “Poppa and I just want you to know that we think of you as one of the family now, and we couldn’t be happier for our little girl to have such a sweet companion as you.” Is this even a scandal in Whistle Stop? No, because the restaurant serves such great food. Idgie helps out hobos, and torments the Reverend Scroggins (the king of Prohibition) by telling newcomers that he has the best liquor in town. She’s on good terms with the black folks over in Troutville--who also pass through this story carrying out their own adventures with verve and enthusiasm. Artis Peazy, for instance, “so black he was a deep royal blue, had caused a lot of trouble for the opposite sex. One gal drank a can of floor wax and topped it off with a cup of Clorox, trying to separate herself from the same world he was in . . . he became continually uneasy after dark because she had snuck up behind him more than once and cracked him in the head with a purse full of rocks. . . .”

This past , this Alabama , is magically spun by the old lady into vivid myth: “Although it was only 4:30 in the afternoon, the sky was already a gun-metal gray, with silver streaks shooting across the north, and the winter rain that had just started was as thin and as cold as ice water. Next door, the windows of Opal’s beauty shop had already been decorated with blinking Christmas lights that reflected on the wet sidewalk.” Pretty, pretty writing, full of nostalgia, of love. “My Heart,” Fannie Flagg calls this rural Alabama in her acknowledgements, “My Home.” And she dedicates this book to Tommy Thompson, that wonderful storyteller who lived an international celebrity life, but never forgot his Southern past. This whole literary enterprise shines with honesty, gallantry, and love of perfect details that might otherwise be forgotten.

What happens to poor Evelyn Couch as she listens to these stories of hunting, drinking, forbidden love, racism, and bravery in the face of racism and even murder? She comes back to life. It’s a miracle but (if you’re not too sophisticated) Fannie Flagg will make you believe it. She even throws in some recipes--for pork chops, grits, red-eye gravy, and those fried green tomatoes from the Whistle Stop Cafe.