Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a 1987 novel by Fannie Flagg. It was adapted into the film Fried Green Tomatoes, which was released in 1991. (Hollinger, 1998)

The story jumps narration and sequence and is distinctive in chapter opening visuals to establish the date and the source of the chapter. Some come from the fictional newspaper in Whistle Stop, Alabama called The Weems Weekly. Some come from the Couchs' house in Birmingham, and others fill in some of the more intimate details of the stories told about the characters.

The story is told through many generations and begins in 1985 with an unfulfilled housewife named Evelyn Couch, who comes with her husband to visit his elderly mother, who dislikes Evelyn, at Rose Terrace Convalescent Home. While avoiding her, Evelyn meets nursing home resident Mrs. "Ninny" Threadgoode, who begins to tell her random stories of her home in Whistle Stop, beginning in the 1920s. Evelyn becomes so interested in the stories of Whistle Stop that her life begins to take new meaning in the characters in Mrs. Threadgoode's history.

Ninny Threadgoode grew up in a bustling house after being adopted by the Threadgoode family and eventually married one of the brothers. Her first love, however, was young Buddy Threadgoode, whose pet of all the children was the youngest girl, Idgie (Imogene). An unrepentant tomboy, Idgie learned her charm from Buddy. Buddy died, when a train hit him, and young Idgie was devastated. Nothing civilized her until a few summers later when beautiful and virtuous Ruth Jamison came to live with the family while she taught Vacation Bible School. The family and servants watched with amusement as Idgie fell head over heels in love with Ruth, but when Ruth went home to Georgia to marry a man she was promised to, once more, Idgie drank too much, lived in the woods, and fell apart. (Hollinger, 1998)

After a few years, Idgie went to check up on Ruth and discovered that her husband, Frank Bennett, was abusing her. When Ruth's mother died of illness soon after, a page torn from the Book of Ruth in the Bible was sent to the Threadgoode house (appropriately Ruth 1:16, "But Ruth said, 'Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.'"), and Idgie, her brother Julian, and Big George (son of the Threadgoode cook, Sipsey) went to Georgia to bring the pregnant Ruth home. Frank resisted, but Ruth came home and promised never to leave Idgie again. Papa Threadgoode gave Idgie money to start a business so that she could care for Ruth and their son. She bought the cafe where Sipsey and her daughter-in-law Onzell cooked, and Big George, married to Onzell, made the ...