Book Club: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

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Disclosure: I have never seen the movie. This is one of the most ingeniously written stories I have read. A woman, in the 1980's, visiting her mother-in-law with her husband at a nursing home runs into an elderly woman who starts (and never stops) talking to her. At first, she's a distraction and soon she is taken in by what the elderly woman is saying. As she continues accompanying her husband, her main motivation becomes to meet the elderly woman and hear her stories about her life at Whistle Stop, Alabama mostly during the 1930's and extending beyond. The woman is going through a self-confidence crisis. Her children are grown. She's not sure if she really loves her husband... or if ever did, but doesn't want to leave him. All the things that made sense to her under 1950's values no longer seem to make sense in "modern" 1980's. She tells the elderly woman, "I'm too old to be young and too young to be old." Feeling like she doesn't fit, she seeks respite from how life is being described by the elderly woman in 1930's Whistle Stop. The ingenious part of the writing is that the elderly woman tells her stories that include life tragedies including death and murder. As an elderly woman though, there are missing pieces to her story, there are things she doesn't remember, doesn't seem to make full sense, or seems confusing. Chapters alternate between the stories she tells her new friend, going back to the time where what actually happened is narrated, and to the local Whistle Stop newspaper that relates the town's gossip that includes what is happening. By getting those different perspectives, the reader gets the full story including finding out the surprise murderer. The characters literally come alive, both the ones in the 1980's and the ones from long ago in Whistle Stop. It's one of those books where you feel you were actually there, in the story carried by the words. I am apprehensive about watching the movie because I don't want the story to be ruined... the book is perfect as is. But, the author (Fannie Flagg) wrote the screenplay and it's supposed to be true to the book, so I think I will.