As someone who watched a whole lot of Game Show Network reruns as a child, Fannie Flagg was familiar to me from her Match Game appearances. Though she demonstrated a quick wit from her perch next to Richard Dawson, I was still surprised to find out that she also a popular author. Thanks to the 1991 film adaptation, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is her best known novel.
Like the film, the novel is a set of parallel stories. In the frame narrative, a menopausal Alabama housewife named Evelyn ostensibly visiting her mother-in-law at the nursing home sneaks away and encounters octogenarian Virginia “Ninny” Threadgoode, who launches into tales of her life growing up in the titular Whistle Stop. Flagg then flashes back occasionally to present the events of the past in more traditional form. She also includes several elements not included in the film including a weekly Whistle Stop newsletter written in down-home style by local resident Dot Weems. There are also a few glimpses into the lives of the novel’s black characters, though I must say that the infrequency of these chapters diminished their effectiveness.
The story is disparate and spread out over decades, but the main thrust concerns the owners and operators of the Cafe, Imogene “Idgie” Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison. When Ruth visits for a summer, tomboyish Idgie falls head 0ver heels in love and is subsequently despondent when Ruth returns to Georgia. After Ruth returns, fleeing an abusive marriage and carrying a child, the two are inseparable.
The depiction of Ruth and Idgie’s relationship is oddly fascinating. In both the contemporary 1986 of the frame narrative and the ’20s and ’30s of their story, the love between the women is stated matter-of-factly and not presented as scandalous, controversial, or dangerous at all. It’s both curious and sort of refreshing, although Flagg is also not perhaps as clear and direct as today’s reader would expect. The terms of the relationship are never made explicit or defined.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is an unusually-structured novel that resists easy categorization. There is a mystery aspect, but it’s solution is not the climax of the novel, nor is the mystery itself centered particularly. Flagg seems to be aiming at a more panoramic look at small-town life in the early 20th century south, though the minimal attention paid to developing the Black characters belies her ambition.
The same comic wit Flagg demonstrated on Match Game shines through, however, and makes Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe an undeniably charming read. Though readers may wish for bigger portions, there’s no denying that what is served up is pretty damn good.