Fannie Flagg is the author of "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop
Cafe," and for those of you who aren't familiar with her work, I recommend
it. I'd read "Tomatoes" and another of her titles, "Welcome to the World,
Baby Girl," years ago, so when I ran across this one at the used book store,
I snapped it up.

"Rainbow" is the story of a fictitious small town in southern Missouri that
could have very well been the place where I grew up. The characters are
well defined and unique. This follows the story of Elmwood Springs, Mo,
from 1946 to 2000, in all it's glorious local color. It's the story of
Neighbor Dorothy, a homemaker who broadcasts a daily radio program from her
living room, with her mother in law, Mother Smith, on the piano in the
background, her husband, Doc, who is the town pharmacist, and their two
children, Anna Lee, who must go through the throes of adolescence with her
life virtually on the air every day, and the boy, Bobby, who has one
misadventure after another. There is the young girl who lives next door,
blind since birth, who sings like an angel, and the Oldman Family Gospel
group headed by the flamboyant Minne Oldman, who weighs 250 pounds and
attacks the piano with such gusto that it bounces. There is Minnie's
painfully shy and mousy daughter, Betty Raye, who was switched at birth in
the hospital and went home with the wrong family to live a life she was
never designed to live, while the real Oldman offspring, the girl with heavy
features, stout body, and forthright personality goes off to become a
debutante in the country club world. There's Norma and Macky, the high
school sweethearts who marry and become the backbone of the whole town.
There's Norma's Aunt Elner, an eccentric and plain spoken old gal who owns a
succession of orange cats, all of them named Sonny. There's Hamm Sparks,
the outgoing and gawky tractor salesman with political ambitions and his eye
on poor Betty Raye. There's the Goodnight Sisters, WWII veterans who make a
career out of traveling the country in a camping trailer, collecting
postcards, salt and pepper shakers, and friends along the way. And, finally
there is poor Tot, a woman who's life is one calamity after another, who
runs the town's only beauty parlor, putting her inept touch on the heads of
all the women in town because they have to keep her in business, after all.
And Neighbor Dorothy tells the tale every morning at 9:00 am when women
throughout the Midwest take a few minutes out of their busy days to sit and
have a cup of coffee with her, stubby pencils at the ready to jot down
today's recipe.

This is a real "feel good" book, a fun read and a sheer delight. It seems
so disjointed in the beginning chapters that I wondered how in the world
Fannie was going to pull all those threads together, but she surely did, and
created a town full of people I felt like I'd sat next to in school, stood
next to at the grocery store, and cried with at the funeral home. I'd
recommend this book for anybody who wants to revisit a simpler, happier time
in American history and get back in touch with their small town roots. It's
a 5, but you probably guessed that already, didn't you? ( )

This was a cute book that I enjoyed reading, but the entire time I had a sneaking suspicion like someone was pushing my buttons. It’s a pleasure to read about strong, colorful women characters. A book entirely peopled with them over a fifty-year period starts to seem a little heavy-handed. The book is missing something that Flagg's best work has. Still, all that female strength would get a lot more cloying than it does were it not that this is a well-written book with a nice turn of phrase; as it is, it was a funny read. ( )

http://blog.libdrone.org/2007/09/few-... ( )

Another wonderfull book from Fannie Flagg. ( )

In Moussouri, via the tower in her backyard we came to know the Oatman Family Southern Gospel singers. I loved it when her daughter was in tears because her mother said she wouldn't date unless the date was an actor/singer. She talked about family and friends with such ease. ( )