5 of us met on Sunday to discuss Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg. As the wind picked up outside we sat cosily inside the Tiled Hall discussing how much we had enjoyed reading it - the scores ranged from 7 to 9 out of 10. Scores like that are high praise indeed.
We each agreed how vivid the voice of each character was, the delight of the excerpts from The Weems Weekly, Whistle Stop Alabama's Weekly Bulletin by Dot Weems, the delightful love story of Ruth and Idgie, the differences between the book and the film adapatation, our favourite bits - we all loved the trial scene and the part in which Evelyn takes her revenge upon parking spot stealers and which of the recipes at the end of the book we would try. We all wanted to be able to go the the Whistle Stop Cafe and to try their Fried Green Tomatoes.
We each agreed how vivid the voice of each character was, the delight of the excerpts from The Weems Weekly, Whistle Stop Alabama's Weekly Bulletin by Dot Weems, the delightful love story of Ruth and Idgie, the differences between the book and the film adapatation, our favourite bits - we all loved the trial scene and the part in which Evelyn takes her revenge upon parking spot stealers and which of the recipes at the end of the book we would try. We all wanted to be able to go the the Whistle Stop Cafe and to try their Fried Green Tomatoes.
The Washington Post describes it as a 'funny and macabre novel' and we all agreed it was exactly that but it isn't just that - it is also a heartwarming tale of love, loss, friendship, cooking, understandable murder, outwitting of the Ku Klux Klan and the judicial system. It's an easy friendly read that doesn't insult your intelligence and it has made us want to read her other books.
We also talked about how to develop book club in the future - one thing we might do is instead of picking individual books is pick a genre, each read a book from that genre and then discuss the genre as a whole but for the meantime we decided we would again write names of books on pieces of paper and then pick one out of the bag. The book chosen this time was Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen and honestly I did not fix the choice - even though this is the second time on the trot it's been my suggestion that was picked.
We'll be meeting to discuss it at 2.30pm (a slight later start as that should give us time to recover from the Buns and Roses Party the night before) on Sunday November 10th at the Tiled Hall Cafe. They do lovely cake. It's the most comic of Jane Austen's novels and is a parody of gothic fiction. Come along and tell us what you think about it - even if you haven't read it and just seen the film or the Wikipedia entry about it.
