That's a mouthful, huh? Kind of like Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. That's Fannie Flagg's big hit turned movie and a good representative of her style. All her books are Southern charm, meets whimsical characters, seemingly silly plots with serious social issues and major twists at the end.
This one is no different.
And yet. I knew exactly what I was getting with a Fannie Flagg book, yet I went through a series of changing emotions while reading. At first, I felt like I was home. There was a sense of "aaahhhh" as I read the first few pages and remembered her way of creating characters who feel like neighbors (despite the fact that I'm about as far from a Southerner as you can get). The main character, Sookie Poole, is just looking forward to a quieter time in life after playing mother of the bride at four weddings in two years. She has a sweet husband, quirky friends and neighbors, and a hilariously overbearing mother, all of whom feel familiar, either as incarnations in Flagg's previous books or reminiscent of people I know and love. (Go ahead, guess which one you are.)
A few chapters in, though, the shift began. I became a little disillusioned and even frustrated with the writing. When Sookie finds out a secret about her family's past that changes how she views herself, she reflects on her life up to now and calls on several friends and family members to help her understand. Some of the internal and external conversations are just plain awkward. One section of dialogue has seven lines starting with "Oh" and another leans heavily on "Well." Those aren't characterization; it's multiple people repeating the same sentence starter. And it"s just one example of the ways the middle of the book feels clunky to me. I started to compare Flagg's writing to some of the more serious stuff I've read lately and it paled a little.
And yet. When I found myself staying up late to finish the book, I realized several things. For one, her secondary story line, the one that has to do with the title, is actually the main story line. Sookie finding out about her past is a way of humanizing the part of American history that Flagg wanted to write about, which includes World War II era sexual politics and what the cover blurb calls a little known spot in American history, the flying of planes by female pilots during the war. Also, I realized that the mystery of the book, which seems so simple I thought I had it solved early on, actually kept me guessing. Flagg drops clever little distracting details that made me think I had it but I was wrong all along. Finally, as I was crying at the end, I knew that Flagg's writing has its own kind of genius. It's not Jess Walters or Elizabeth Gilbert but it's a different kind of American classic. I fell asleep that night wanting to re-watch "A League of Their Own" and hearing patriotic music, yet praying fervently for my daughter to never know the sexual discrimination that has been part of our country's history since forever. All that from a simple Southern charm school kind of story. She's clever, that Fanny Flagg. Clever.
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