Monday, January 21, 2008

Oh I’ve fallen....

….in love! With Fannie Flagg’s Aunt Elner- she’s the protagonist in “Can’t wait to get to heaven’ and appears throughout “ Welcome….Baby Girl” and Standing In…This is such a nice homey view of small town America. Elmswood, the prettiest place to live and reminds me of EL Doctorow. Their lives go on with much love and laughter, there is so much safety and security in the sameness, the small joys of blue bird tracks on a cake spelling disaster[ if only that was true of my life] and women cook and bake and get their hair done and clean house and run businesses if they need some money and get ulcers in case they work in the city becoz they can’t stand the erosion of values success brings. What you see is what you get- almost as Aunt Elner demonstrates by dying and going to heaven and coming back to tell the tale. Who would imagine that she had to conceal evidence when her mentally challenged neighbour killed a man in self defence and was prepared to take the rap!Great books of the salt of the earth and I had to go out and get the earlier books. Reminds me of EL Doctoro’s ‘Ragtime’ and Smiley’s “ A 1000 Acres’ or Tyler’s ‘Saint Maybe’. Have you read it yet?

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