Book Review
Can't Wait to Get to Heaven
By FANNIE FLAGG Reviewed by PEGGY BARNETT
It's April in Missouri, and Aunt Elner had gone up the ladder

only to pick a few figs. She didn't know there was a wasps' nest in the tree, and she didn't know where she was when she woke up in the hospital emergency room. Her niece Norma, who is always anxious, emphasizes that she had told Aunt Elner numerous times not to climb that ladder.

Norma's husband Macky tries to calm her down as they set off to see about the accident. Meanwhile Elner is wondering why hospital people no longer wear white. "Elner thought white looked more professional and doctorlike than the wrinkly, baggy green things these people had on, and it wasn't even a pretty green to boot."

While Elner and the reader are hoping that she turned off the stove and fed her cat Sonny, her neighbors and friends, Ruby and Tot, are taking care of things at her house. Elner had fallen before, and they were worried that this time she had broken her hip. It turns out that it is much worse than that.

Fannie Flagg is the author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café and Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! Among other books. She writes with humor and understanding, so that we never feel that she is making fun of her characters, many of whom are "characters" in the other sense of the word.

The town of Elmwood Springs is like many small towns, and when word gets out that Elner has died, everyone rallies around, bringing food and trying to comfort Norma and Macky. It may not be giving too much away to say that the news of her death is a little premature, though her doctor is quite sure about it. Flagg gets in some digs at hospital administrators and funeral directors, but her satire is gentle.

Everyone loves Elner, who is elderly, though she is not certain about her exact age. When she gets to heaven, everybody there likes her, too, and she is reluctant to leave. Woven into the story are Elner's questions about Life. Without being "preachy," Flagg causes the reader to ponder such puzzles as "What are we here for?"

Can't Wait to Get to Heaven is fun to read. It is available at the Mary Willis Library.

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