Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes is one of my favorite books/movies. Her heroine, Iggy, makes you fall in love with her attitude and strength and just drives the whole narrative. In Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, Flagg tries the same thing with Dena Nordstrom, a tough as nails television star with secret past. While she’s no Iggy, I found Dena’s story interesting enough to turn a few hundred pages, though I doubt I’ll remember much of it in six months.
Dena has fought her way to the top of network television by being tough but honest, a rareity in her business. But she drinks too much and can’t sleep at night, and eventually finds herself being forced to speak to a therapist and work out her problems. The real reason I kept reading this novel was to find out what actually happened to this girl as a child, and I will say that Flagg takes it in a direction that I NEVER would have guessed.
What’s annoying about this book are the folksy people back home In Elmwood Springs, Missouri who call Dena “Baby Girl” and say things like “crazy as a betsy bug”. Those people can grate after a while. But Dena’s character feels the same way throughout most of the novel, and by the end, as she mellows out, the reader is forced to as well.
