Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a 1987 novel by American author and actress Fanny Flagg, who also wrote an award-winning screen adaption of the book. The narrative contains two interconnected stories that unfold several decades apart.

The frame narrative, which takes place in Birmingham, Alabama between December 1985 and December 1986, depicts the developing friendship between a middle-aged housewife named Evelyn Couch and an elderly widow named Ninny Threadgoode. As the story opens, Evelyn is suffering from what she will later recognize as depression and anxiety. Although her life superficially resembles the American ideal, Evelyn is deeply unhappy with how it has turned out. She is traumatized by her mother’s death from cancer, estranged from her husband Ed, and unable to relate to the changes that have taken place in American society. She says, “I just feel stuck…stuck right in the middle. Women’s lib came too late for me…I was already married with two children when I found out that I didn’t have to get married […] And now it’s too late to change…I feel like life has just passed me by” (67).

Evelyn’s life begins to change when she meets Ninny Threadgoode while visiting her mother-in-law at a nursing home.