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Happy reading! :)

Thanks so much for the book...and also for the others you sent:)
Look forward to read this one:)

A lovely book, full of great characters:) It´s difficult to decribe the plot in this book as it´s about so many different people and there is no main character. Those who have read "Can´t wait to get to heaven" will recognise some of the characters:)

A birthday surprise for opheliaPhillips through the Birthday group:) am sending it early as it will go with surface mail!! Hope you will enjoy the book and that you will have a great birthday:)

Thank you for this! I've never heard of it, but of course I've heard of Fannie Flagg as I've read her fried green tomatoes, which was great. This should be good too =)

Wow, I didn't realise I'd been sitting on this book for so long. I lose track of time so easily. I've been reading it over several weeks. I got most of it read and then had to take a break because of a "life event" ;) and have just had a few moments to finish it off now.

It's a long meandering book, which doesn't have a main character or real plot as such, other than "life" of a community in southern USA, spanning from the forties to the nineties. It's written in an anecdotal kind of way, each short little chapter telling you something utterly random, or perhaps more plot-driving for that particular character. So although it's a long book the format makes it easy to dibble in and out of and Fannie Flagg's way of storytelling makes it all feel homely and cosy (although I have to admit I did prefer Fried Green Tomatoes).

It's an idealised world, this little community in a town with Neighbour Dorothy doing her cute little half hour radio shows for decades, and all the housewives in the area listening in. This is a mom and pop world without big problems, where all the women go from school to marriage to kids and housewife land of keeping home and going to the beauty parlour every week (would have driven me nuts!) and not really having a grasp on the real world. Norma getting freaked out about electricity and the house burning down and actually making a list of treasures she expected the firemen to run around the house collecting for her if the house was burning down. I get that was meant to be cutely funny but I just found her immensely irritating and thoughtless.

With the time span you see people get old and inevitably die off, and the world and society change - the tone seeming to be that things are getting worse as time gets on, although I can't go with the rose tinted idea that it was all perfection in the forties. Norma's daughter Linda ends up talking about going to the sperm bank for a donor, and then ends up adopting a Chinese baby girl - all of which her parents are horrified at as these aren't the ways things should be (her father has some thoughts that mum-mum and dad-dad families don't seem right either... hmmmm.) although when they meet the baby girl, Apple, I think they realise that not all change has to be bad. There's corrupt politics with Hamm Sparks, although I don't think that was ever his intention, and then the start of women taking on jobs, being governers in their own right (the intensely shy Betty Ray finds she has a new lease of life and confidence when her husband Hamm disappears presumed dead and runs for governer in her own right. All the male opponents mock her, which actually gets the female half of the voters taking their vote seriously, and the fact that women can do things other than cleaning the house and going to the beauty parlour). So I think although a lot of the characters seem to fear the changes coming up, many are shown to actually be positive steps forward.

Good meandering hot summer read that is easy on the brain.

Going to charity tomorrow as I need to clear out more books from the house. I know some people are nervy about donations to charity, worried that things just get thrown out, but I have seen my donated books on the shelves at the Cats Protection League, so I know for a fact they will sell a bookcrossing book.