Welcome To The World, Baby Girl! (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
I don't have much experience with Flagg, but I know she is a rather celebrated writer who captures Southern flavor with a charm that is most effective. I've read a short story or two and know her style to be quietly ironic and wonderfully colorful. In this full length work, however, I kept wishing she would keep her day job. The novel starts off promising - Flagg is in her element, piecing together a patchwork quilt of Southern personalities as inviting as the warmth they exude, painting detailed pictures and showing a real ear for dialogue. As soon as the story shifts into the protagonist's experience in NYC, however, the novel takes a real turn in all ways and never recovers.Dena, a shockingly beautiful and nothing much else girl, makes it big in stardom and seems to be everyone's favorite though as a character she has zero redeeming qualities. She is asinine at best, at worst a self centered jerk, and the narrative surrounding her is all tell and no show. We are exposed to all the of the details of the story with no subtlety to speak of; characters' motives and issues are broadcast loud and clear and nothing is left to the imagination.Everyone falls in lvoe with Dena though I could not tell you why, and the worst victim of this, Gerry, proceeds to be a seriously boring twerp who will patiently wait and woo as need be because Dena is so .. special? Show me how. Please. All I get is that she's pretty. Doesn't speak well for anyone in this book if that's all there is.Meanwhile a mystery unfolds in painstaking drawn outness that by the time it was revealed just seemed really stupid and anticlimactic.A very long tale with few interesting characters and seriously poor development. Ultimately it was the writing that let me down the most. I felt like someone was talking to me the entire time, instead of allowing me to get lost in the story.
This book was a bit disappointing to me considering the title and the homespun appeal of it's author. I started it over Christmas break and didn't finish it until Feb. break and then I was bound and determined to be done with it. I enjoyed the characters in the small town in Missouri, as well as the sorority sister in Alabama- even thought they were such stereotypes. The main character, Dena Norstrom, I found unspympathetic even though she is not unlikable. I found it unrealistic that her psychiatrist falls in love with her but the new psychiatrist broke all kinds of stereotypes and was a mother figure to Dena. She also had a father figure in Howard Kingsley. Going back and forth in time was also a bit distracting and made it difficult to read if you were doing it at a snail's pace as I was. If the last 100 pages had been developed and told the whole story, I would have loved it. I thought that was the best idea. At the risk of spoiling it for you all, the story would have included Vienna, Nazis, the world of music and medicine, Southern attitudes towards blacks, Black society, conflict between light skinned and dark skinned blacks,conflicts between parent and child. It could have been a John Irving book! It had so much more potential than to be part of a story of a woman on her way to the top in the TV industry with country bumpkin cousins and friends. BTW- this also included a refernece to a drive through funeral parlor. Is it a Southern Thing? Now I feel compelled to go search for one-perhaps even insist on being displayed in one upon my demise.
What do You think about Welcome To The World, Baby Girl! (2001)?
Fannie Flagg books -the one you read when you feel that you are at your lowest point, when you feel that the world cannot get any worse, when you feel so over burdened that you are ready to go to pieces...if you can stop for a moment and pick up book, read anything written by Fannie Flagg and I PROMISE you that you will feel better...you will laugh and you will cry...you will do both at the same time...she is by far one of the best fiction/humor writers since Damon Runyon walked into Mindy's and asked if they made more cheese cake than strudel. It is unfair to say that Fannie Flagg is strictly a Southern writer as it unfair to say that Runyon was a great New York writer...they both share an uncanny ear for the way people speak and are able to write it...you cannot read a Fannie Flagg novel and just walk away..her characters just stay with you and they're honest, even when they're doing something they shouldn't they remain true to themselves...
—Kimberly
Io alla gente voglio bene"Ogni giorno sui quotidiani e in televisione non si sentiva parlare d'altro che di omicidi, scandali, trame oscure, tragedie e brutte cose. E ogni giorno dal Pacifico all'Atlantico c'erano milioni di brave persone contente e soddisfatte che, facendosene più o meno un baffo dei media, vivevano tranquillamente la loro vita".Non mi aspettavo assolutamente un romanzo così bello. L'ho trovato profondo e, soprattutto sul finale, ho pianto come una fontana - mi sono anche chiesta che problema ho.Una mia vecchia prof. di storia ci diceva sempre, per fare bella figura, di iniziare col nostro cavallo di Troia (e forse è l'unica cosa proficua che ho imparato da lei). Ecco, anche Fannie Flagg ne ha uno, di cavallo di Troia...i suoi personaggi; così frizzanti, ciarlieri e vitali che non amarli è impossibile. Li amo tutti.Questo libro è un inno alla vita - provinciale, solita, noiosa e bella come la cena di Natale che è sempre uguale o ogni anno l'aspetto trepidante.Leggerlo, spegnendo la televisione proprio sulla sigla del tg mi ha dato un piacere che sa un po' di vendetta. Una vendetta buona però.
—Sara
WOW, what a book. This book was for our reading club and at first the size said, " you are not going to finish this in less than a month." I was wrong. The protagonist is a very young lady who is having problems enjoying the life she is living because of an unfinished past. The present is a self destructing life. Through counseling, investigation, she comes to terms with who she is, where she came from, and is now able to go forward with her life in a more positive light. She is at more peace with herself. My mind was engaged in looking into my past and how I was shaped by it and how I broke that shaping by learning more about myself and learning that myself does not need to be defined by others. A must read.
—L.D.
