Flagg manages to treat her characters with both outrageous humor and solid affection-a rare combination that makes for great fun. Tall tales, acts of simple courage, everyday heroism and love abound in this funny, high-spirited, unabashedly sentimental book. These are some of the South’s most iconic dishes, the last of which has made a name for itself in Hollywood, upscale restaurants and down-home diners alike. They all become so real to Evelyn that she takes Cleo's memories of the Whistle Stop folk into her own heart and, fortified by them, forsakes Mars Bars for carrot sticks, eventually finding fulfillment selling Mary Kay cosmetics. Crispy chicken, collard greens, cornbread and fried green tomatoes. Cleo's old gang included beautiful, gentle Ruth and her blonde, trouser-wearing companion Idgie Ruth's one-armed son Stump gossip-monger Dottle Weems and an assortment of tramps, bad girls, do-gooders and rascals.

Cleo chats about her life in the 1930's, when she was part of a huge, extended family that centered around the Whistle Stop Cafe, a barbecue joint at a railroad stop near Birmingham, Alabama. At 48, Evelyn Couch ''had gotten lost somewhere along the way.'' By the time she had second thoughts about the Vietnam War, ''Jane Fonds had already moved on to her exercise class.'' When she joined a consciousness-raising group, ''the woman suggested that next week they bring a mirror so they could all study their vaginas, and she never went back.'' Overweight, menopausal and suicidal, Evelyn visits her mother-in-law at the Rose Terrace Nursing Home, and there encounters 86-year-old, purple-haired Cleo Threadgoode (coiffed by a midget because ''I love a midget''). Former Candid Camera writer Flagg (Coming Attractions, 1981) has written a hilarious, heartwarming novel about the practical uses of nostalgia and the healing power of community spirit.

Fried green tomatoes book cover