Product Description

Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is the 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. . . .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14108 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-31
• Released on: 2000-10-31
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 6.82" h x 1.14" w x 4.20" l, .45 pounds
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
When Cleo Threadgood and Evelyn Couch meet in the visitors lounge of an Alabama nursing home, they find themselves exchanging the sort of confidences that are sometimes only safe to reveal to strangers. At 48, Evelyn is falling apart: none of the middle-class values she grew up with seem to signify in today's world. On the other hand, 86-year-old Cleo is still being nurtured by memories of a lifetime spent in Whistle Stop, a pocket-sized town outside of Birmingham, which flourished in the days of the Great Depression. Most of the town's life centered around its one cafe, whose owners, gentle Ruth and tomboyish Idgie, served up grits (both true and hominy) to anyone who passed by. How their love for each other and just about everyone else survived visits from the sheriff, the Ku Klux Klan, a host of hungry hoboes, a murder and the rigors of the Depression makes lively readingthe kind that eventually nourishes Evelyn and the reader as well. Though Flagg's characters tend to be sweet as candied yams or mean clear through, she manages to infuse their story with enough tartness to avoid sentimentality. 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 the trains don't stop there anymore.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"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

"COURAGEOUS AND WISE."
--Houston Chronicle

Ingram
The tale of two women: the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth, who ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, back in the thirties. Their southern-style cafe offered good barbecue, good coffee, and all kinds of love and laughter--not to mention an occasional murder.