Tag: southern USA

He doesn’t have the sense of a billy goat

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
by Fannie Flagg

This was a book club pick and I thought somehow that it would be light and fluffy and girly, possibly because that’s how I remember the film (though on rewatching the film this week I discovered it’s not really those things either). It’s certainly an easy, enjoyable read, but it covers a lot of issues without labouring the point and has some very interesting things to say.

In the 1980s middle-aged Alabama housewife Evelyn Couch is visiting a nursing home and gets talking to a resident there, Mrs Ninny Threadgoode. Ninny is old and a little forgetful but also charming and immediately launches into stories about her early life in a small town called Whistle Stop. At the heart of these stories are Idgie and Ruth, the two women who ran the Whistle Stop Cafe from 1929 until it closed. However, inbetween there are snippets about other characters from the town and their lives, all told with a wonderful sense of humour.

“This skinny little man, so black he was a deep royal blue, had caused a lot of trouble for the opposite sex. One gal drank a can of floor wax and topped it off with a cup of Clorox, trying to separate herself from the same world he was in. When she survived, claiming that the liquids had ruined her complexion for life, he became continually uneasy after dark, because she had snuck up behind him more than once and cracked him in the head with a purseful of rocks.”

And at that level it all sounds a bit twee. But this book covers racist violence, domestic abuse, homosexuality, prostitution, extreme poverty and death, which is some pretty dark stuff for a story that’s so nice and chirpy on the surface. I know some at book group felt that this meant none of the themes were really explored, but were just thrown in there, and certainly the only subjects really talked about are female empowerment and death.

But then one of the running themes in this book is not talking about important things. Idgie and Ruth are a couple, which you would think was a big no-no in a small southern US town in the 1930s, but the whole town seems to know and just accept the situation. I wondered if this was because they all consider Idgie an honorary man. She certainly not only joins in with but often takes lead in hunting, fishing, gambling, drinking and the other manly pursuits of the town. But she’s far from being the only strong woman in town.

“Cleo, Idgie’s brother, was concerned…
‘Idgie, I’m telling you, you don’t need to feed every [hobo] that shows up at your door. You’ve got a business to run here. Julian…says he thinks you’d let Ruth and the baby go without to feed those bums.’
…’What does Julian know? He’d starve to death himself if Opal didn’t have the beauty shop. What are you listening to him for? He doesn’t have the sense of a billy goat.’
Cleo couldn’t disagree with her on that point.”

Each chapter takes a different source or viewpoint, so there’s Evelyn’s daily life, Ninny’s reminiscences, the Whistle Stop newsletter and other newspaper articles, and occasionally a plain old omniscient narrator. There’s also lots of jumping back and forth in time, which was confusing at first because there seemed to be sections that were unrelated, but by the end it all ties together. And also, in the end there is no single character who knows everything that the reader does, which I quite liked.

Generally, I found what could have been a heavy-handed moral tale a much more subtle look at life in the southern US. The one unsubtle message was about strong women. Really, it’s Evelyn’s story, and she is discovering through Ninny’s stories how unhappy she is with her life, downtrodden and ignored by her husband.

“After the boy at the supermarket had called her those names, Evelyn Couch had felt violated. Raped by words. Stripped of everything. She had…always been terrified of displeasing men…She had spent her life tiptoeing around them like someone lifting her skirt stepping through a cow pasture.”

As someone at book club pointed out, at the novel’s heart is the power of storytelling. Ninny’s stories have to be good for us to believe they would have such a profound effect on Evelyn. And it is all a rollicking good yarn, with a running theme of tall tales.

I seem to be saying this of every other book at the moment, but I think I would get a lot out of re-reading this.

First published 1987 by Random House.

Voices

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The Help
by Kathryn Stockett

Audiobook narrated by Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer and Cassandra Campbell

A few weeks ago the Guardian offered readers this audiobook as a free download via Audible. Well, I couldn’t say no to that, could I? This book was even on my wishlist. Perfect.

This is the first audiobook I’ve listened to in years and it’s a very different experience from reading, so I still can’t say for sure whether I would have enjoyed reading this book. Probably, but I can’t be certain. However, I loved the audiobook. It’s a gripping story, with lots of wonderful characters and the narrators did a fantastic job of bringing it to life. Really, this felt more like a radio play than a read, but it was more immersive and captivating than any radio play I can remember.

The story is narrated by three characters, plus there is one chapter told in third person, and those are the four voice actors. Each narrates their own chapters in full, putting on different voices for the different people they talk about, so you hear some characters voiced three or even four different ways. It sounds confusing but it isn’t really.

The story is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. White women throw themselves into the busy schedule of society events, setting up their unmarried friends with suitable partners and having babies, while their coloured maids raise those babies, clean their houses and cook their meals. No-one questions this state of things or tries to change it, even while the rest of the USA is discovering civil rights, but beneath the surface, tensions are high between the communities. Nasty things happen to anyone who steps out of line, and the line is narrow.

Narrator number one is Aibileen, maid to Elizabeth Leefolt, a vacuous woman whose eagerness to please centre of society and “League” president Hilly Holbrook makes her an increasingly difficult and even dangerous employer. Narrator number two is Minnie, another maid, who near the start of the book is fired by Hilly Holbrook on behalf of her aged mother and must find another job while Hilly is spreading lies all over town about her. Narrator number three is Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, an old schoolfriend of Elizabeth and Hilly and the only one to make it through college – the others left to get married. She is a slightly awkward woman, convinced by her mother’s constant sniping that she is too tall, too plain and too lacking in taste to ever attract a man. So instead she lives with her parents and sticks to her routine of League events and tennis at the country club, keen to be a part of it all.

At the start of the book Elizabeth and Skeeter seem quite similar – nice enough, thrown by Hilly’s nasty comments about black people but pretty clueless about the world really. But a combination of things make their paths diverge. Skeeter is intelligent while Elizabeth is dumb, but Elizabeth is a central member of society by being married and a mother, while Skeeter, by being single and resisting attempts to change that, is held at arms’ length from society. When Skeeter pitches article ideas to a New York publisher and touches on civil rights, she is only raising the topics she thinks the publisher wants to hear about. But then she starts to look around her and find out what is actually going on, and is shocked into taking sides.

The three narrators are warm, funny, wonderful characters – at least, once they get to have their own say they are. But there’s also a large cast of further characters running the whole gamut from scheming and vindictive, complacent and therefore complicit, genuinely good but afraid to stand out from the crowd, and many others inbetween. There’s a violent husband, a loving husband, an absent husband. There’s white outsiders besides Skeeter. All are fully fleshed out and real (though that may be due to good acting as much as good writing).

I thought I knew the facts about civil rights, about the divisions and the violence and the politics, but this book brought to life what it must have really been like, the genuine life-threatening danger of being different, just 50 years ago in a so-called civilised country. It’s terrifying but it’s also wonderful to see how brave people could be, had to be, in the face of awfulness. And yet, in spite of the huge, dark issues, this is a warm, uplifting book.

When I first downloaded the audiobook I didn’t know how I would find time to listen to over 17 hours of it. That’s a lot of time. But I downloaded the Audible app so I could listen on my phone and it has been my companion for two weeks – walking to work, doing housework, taking the train – all to the soundtrack of Mississippi accents drawing me into a world that I was genuinely sad to leave behind.

The film rights were snapped up pretty quickly and I believe The Help (film) has already been released in the US, while in the UK we have to wait until October. I’m intrigued but so much will have to be cut. Hmm.

Book first published 2009.

UPDATE: There has been some controversy surrounding this book and a great discussion has started over on Amy Reads and Wolfs Howl, who are also running a related reading project. Very illuminating.

Flavour of the south

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The Romance Readers’ Book Club
by Julie L Cannon

I bought this book on my recent trip to the United States because it looked like both a fun, easy read and an authentic flavour of the southern US. It deals well with some big issues, though it doesn’t come to the conclusions that I would necessarily have hoped for or agreed with.

This book treads a fine line between sweet fluffy teen romance and deeper “issues”-ridden prose with some literary merit. For the most part it is well written and engaging but some of the exposition was clunky, especially at the start. That said, the characters are believable and the story had me interested enough that I read the whole book in one sitting.

The story is that of teenage Tammi, living a secluded life on a farm in Rigby, Georgia, with her strict religious grandparents, or rather step-grandparents, which adds an element of them doing her a favour that is the first clue that all is not actually sweetness and light. Tammi has a lot of chores to do, must dress in the shapeless clothes her grandmother picks out and isn’t allowed to listen to modern music (it’s the 1970s). Which doesn’t exactly make her Miss Popularity at school. Tammi’s only real friends are her Aunt Minna and Uncle Orr, who each live in their own house on the farm and provide an escape. Minna is colourful and eccentric, Orr is severely mentally disabled; both are devoted to young Tammi.

The story proper begins when Tammi gets hold of a stack of steamy romance novels that she knows her grandmother will disapprove of but is eager to read. She persuades a girl at school to join her Romance Readers Book Club and soon a small group is meeting secretly every four weeks to share the illicit thrill. Tammi’s burgeoning sexuality is being stifled by real life and she desperately needs this escape, but she is terrified that it is a huge sin and may be the cause of the endless drought that is threatening her family’s livelihood.

There’s quite a lot going on in Tammi’s world, with peripheral characters having their own dramas that sometimes crash into Tammi’s life. I did find it odd that, aside from sexual matters, Tammi seemed to lack curiosity – maybe she has been too well trained in politeness and not asking questions but she seemed happy to find out what’s going on in dribs and drabs. And even when it came to sex there was a for me heartbreaking scene where she realises she doesn’t actually know what all these metaphors and allusions about passionate encounters are actually getting at. She has no idea what comes after kissing.

I definitely felt a strong sense of place in this novel. Not that I’m familiar with Georgia, but it somehow persuaded me of its authenticity of accent, terminology and people. I also felt that Orr was depicted well; his friendship with Tammi was touching and his inability to cope with having steamy romance novels read aloud to him was surprisingly sad because it marked the first division between Tammi and her favourite companion.

It’s worth pointing out that this book comes from a part of the world where going to church is all-important. Cannon uses some clever misdirection on this topic but actually faith itself is never questioned, only how to interpret the word of God. Tammi’s revolt against the strictness of her grandmother is never very extreme and she repents every tiny thing. In a way, this is actually very clever, because if Tammi had broken away from everything dramatically this would be a story about how romance novels are a corrupting influence, whereas the point of course is that these novels are a natural and badly needed escape and the only harm done is the temporary confusion that Tammi would probably have gone through anyway.

There are a lot of short “excerpts” from the romance novels in question and they really did take me back to being a teenager myself, devouring these books before I had ever even kissed a boy, daydreaming obsessively of being a character in one of those exotic locales with the clichéd dark handsome man. By the time I got my first boyfriend I’d realised those books were trash and moved on but they played their part in my “coming of age” and I suspect I’m not alone in that.

One final point on this novel – the blurb on the back was particularly poor. I know a lot of people say to always ignore it anyway and if I’m buying a book because I like the author or read about it in a review I do ignore the cover as much as I can. But when I’m just browsing unknown books, that blurb is providing useful information. Theoretically. But in this case whoever wrote the blurb got the wrong end of the stick and almost certainly hadn’t read the manuscript. There are several factual errors and it misses out some of the more interesting, serious themes. That said, I’m still glad I picked it up.

First published 2008 by Plume, an imprint of the Penguin Group.