Since I’m still resting and not up to being creative and definitely lacking energy, I sought a comfort read sometime Monday and pulled this off the shelf, finishing it late last night. I’d guess I’ve read it more than once through the years, and I remember having questions AS I read it the first time, but not after I read it, and it surprises me the confusion people still discuss online about the plot and the characters. Fannie Flagg (actress, comedian, novelist, screenwriter, and director, born in Alabama, and has long made her home in California) does a great job of switching between narrative voices, including an omniscient narrator, as well as characters’ points of view, and newspapers and community bulletins from several locations. The timeline, non-linear, covers various years from 1917 to 1988. There are also a number of settings, some are fictional, most are not. Here’s a list for you to guess which is which: Warrior River, AL fish camp; Atmore, AL; Chicago, IL; Roanoke, VA; Birmingham, AL; Troutville, AL; Atlanta, GA; Whistle Stop, AL; Montecito, CA; Marianne, FL; Valdosta, GA; Slagtown, AL.
The book was released in 1987, and by the time I got a paperback version in 1990, probably highly recommended among the bookstore staff I worked with, there was already an abundance of love for it, including newspapers and literary reviews, and two significant Southern writers, Eudora Welty and, not shown here, Harper Lee, who said about it, “A richly comic, poignant narrative.”
One thing that happened as I reread it was that I constantly saw the faces of the 1991 film actors especially Cicely Tyson, Jessica Tandy, Mary-Louise Parker, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Kathy Bates. Tom, Mother, and I didn’t get to the movie early enough and were forced to sit too close to the screen. I never like this, to the point that I remember both times it happened in 1991: The Prince of Tides and Fried Green Tomatoes. It was very overwhelming to see Barbra Streisand’s intensity at gigantic size, and Kathy Bates, who was filmed specifically to look overweight because it’s part of her character’s storyline, was also visually daunting.
The novel and the film have many differences. It’s possible some of the confusion people express about “who did it,” or the way they blend two distinctly different characters into one, or gloss over truths about some characters, is because they only ever saw the movie, because those things are pretty clear in the novel. I’ve decided to give the DVD a watch today since I just read the book. Fortunately, everyone will be at laptop-screen scale.