Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Fannie Flagg, 1987
Historical fiction Contemporary fictionLiterary fictionRomance
An unhappy Birmingham housewife meets an eighty-six-year-old woman with a lifetime of stories about a Depression-era Alabama cafe.
Feels like wonder, tenderness and nostalgia. About friendship, memory and society.
A page from the book
The one thing she'd change about her life is a driver's license.
"But I never drove a car . . . I’ve been stranded most all my life. Always stayed close to home. Always had to wait for somebody to come and carry me to the store or to the doctor or down to the church. Years ago, you used to be able to take a trolley to Birmingham, but they stopped running a long time ago. The only thing I’d do different if I could go back would be to get myself a driver’s license. Fannie Flagg.Fannie Flagg was a regular panelist on TV's Match Game and wrote the screenplay for the 1991 film of this novel.
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Questions readers ask
- What is Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe like?
- Feels like wonder, tenderness and nostalgia. About friendship, memory and society.
- What should I read after Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe?
- If you liked Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, try Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry), People We Meet on Vacation (Emily Henry) and Looking for Alaska (John Green).
A taste of the feed
The advice you give a friend who wants one thing too badly.
Lorie darlin’, life in San Francisco, you see, is still just life. If you want any one thing too badly, it’s likely to turn out to be a disappointment. The only healthy way to live life is to learn to like all the little everyday things, like a sip of good whiskey in the evening, a soft bed, a glass of buttermilk, or a feisty gentleman like myself.
Lonesome Dove · Larry McMurtry
The oldest child who learned to keep everything buttoned up.
Alex Nilsen is a study in control. In that tall, broad, permanently slouched and/or pretzel-folded body of his, there’s a surplus of stoicism (the result of being the oldest child of a widower with the most vocal anxiety of anyone I’ve ever met) and a stockpile of repression (the result of a strict religious upbringing in direct opposition to most of his passions; namely, academia), alongside the most truly strange, secretly silly, and intensely softhearted goofball I’ve had the pleasure to know.
People We Meet on Vacation · Emily Henry
The case for being seventeen and certain nothing can end you.
When adults say, “Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
Looking for Alaska · John Green
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