Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg

Rating: 6/10

Review:
Believe me, I wanted to adore this book so very much and I would have loved to give it a perfect score. But to be honest, Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe stops from being an epic, heart-warming novel because of its wayward narrative and too many characters. Old Mrs.Ninny Threadgoode tells the story of her life to Evelyn Couch, a middle-aged woman with her own problems, taking both Evelyn and the reader to the unforgettable town of Whistle Stop, Alabama.

One of the best things about the book is definitely how Flagg makes Whistle Stop and the variety of people who inhabited it during the Depression, come to life. Much like Evelyn, by the time you're done reading the book, you feel you know Whistle Stop, its folk, and its popular cafe run by two women Ruth and Idgie, so very well. Flagg writes with great humour, intense emotion and is very quotable. But I had problems with the structuring of the story. It jumps from present to the past way too often, which becomes tedious and drawn-out. The narration of past and present is interspersed with newspaper clippings that add to the tale. 

I entirely adored the newspaper clippings. Dot Weems, who writes for The Weems Weekly, is a joy to read and she's my new absolutely favourite character. Sample this bit from her hilarious, personalized, to-the-point articles that reflected the closeness of the society she wrote for:

'Yes, my other half is the same one who went for a ride when we had that hailstorm with hail as big as baseballs and it took us three weeks to get the windshield replaced. He's the same one that got struck by the lightning, fishing down on the river in a rowboat. So the next time you see bad weather coming and you see Wilbur, send him home and I'm gonna put him in the closet and lock him up. I'm afraid a tornado is liable to pick him up and take him on off somewhere...then who would I have to fight with?'

Much like Dot Weems, there are some excellent characters like the feisty Idgy Threadgoode, the adorable Ninny Threadgoode etc. But the major problem that made this book less enjoyable to me was the numerous characters that just kept turning up. There were just too many names and too many people, that I was in no mood to care for them much, because I kept forgetting who was who! 

The relationship between Igdie and Ruth was interesting to read, as was the friendship between Evelyn and Mrs. Threadgoode. The novel also tackles themes like lesbianism, racism, feminism. As the novel went on, it was easy to notice that there was no one main plot, but numerous sub plots. Some characters just involve the reader emotionally and there are a couple of absolutely heartwarming scenes that brought me close to tears. But those scenes, sadly, were not too many. 

I've heard that the movie has fewer characters and a more streamlined plot in place. Which is a huge relief because the one thing that troubled the book for me was the fact that it took up too much more than it could handle. I've also heard that this is one of those rare instances when the movie is better than the book, and I'm looking forward to watching it!