Mrs Threadgoode begins to tell Evelyn a story of changing times whose colourful characters are unlike anyone Evelyn ever read in books before. From this, we are transported to the year 1985 to the Rose Terrance Nursing Home, where Evelyn Couch, a self-conscious and depressed housewife, meets an upbeat and optimistic nursing home resident Ninny Threadgoode. The vegetables available at the café are: “ creamed corn, fried green tomatoes, fried okra…black-eyes peas…and lima beans”.

For lunch and supper, the following options are available: “ fried chicken pork chops and gravy catfish chicken and dumplings or a barbecue plate”. For breakfast there one may have: “ eggs, grits, biscuits, bacon, sausage, ham and red-eye gravy, and coffee”. The book opens with some Whistle Stop newspaper bulletin news (of June 12, 1929) about a new café opening in Whistle Stop, run by Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison.

Originally presented, paying special attention to the connecting power of food and cooking, the book also touches on such themes as racism, aging, marital violence, and finding hope in difficult times. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a “feel-good” book at the centre of which is a powerful story of two women whose friendship and love enabled them to overcome obstacles in their way. Mrs Threadgoode also hints at a murder mystery which got everyone talking in the 1930s in Whistle Stop. Evelyn goes back in her mind to that time when Ms Threadgoode’s wild, free-spirited sister-in-law Idgie and her beautiful, soft-spoken friend Ruth ran a café in Whistle Stop, discovering the hardship they went through and the happiness they found. This book is about two women – Evelyn Couch, a middle-aged housewife, and Ninny Threadgoode, an elderly woman in a nursing home, – meeting in 1985, and Ms Threadgoode starts to tell Evelyn about her youth spent in Whistle Stop, Alabama during the Depression era. Cleo Threadgoode, June 1986 (preface quote to Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café). “ I may be sitting here at the Rose Terrace Nursing Home, but in my mind I’m over at the Whistle Stop Café having a plate of fried green tomatoes“, Mrs. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café – ★★★★

Fried green tomatoes book review