Standing Under the Rainbow

Fannie Flagg is true to herself - a bit old-fashioned, devilishly charming, and soulfully ironic. "Standing Under the Rainbow" is a novel that brings together many of the characters and personas from the author's other works. In the cozy provincial town of Elmwood Springs, everyone knows each other, but the lives of its residents are known hundreds of kilometers away, all thanks to Neighbor Dorothy - a woman with a smiling voice who runs the town's radio and shares what life is like in her hometown across the country. And life is quite diverse and fascinating here, as each townsfolk is special, with their own quirks and pretensions. For example, there's Blind Singing Bird - a girl with a divine voice and courage that any sighted person would envy. There's also Cecil, the king of the funeral business, and shy Betty Ray, destined to become the state's governor, and wild Aunt Elmer, and her proper niece Norma, and many, many others. This book is a true carousel of characters and destinies, filled with laughter and tears, with the incredible and the mundane. But above all, it is a novel about time and the fact that the world is beautiful in every era - you just have to know how to see beauty and happiness behind the everyday husk. And Fannie Flagg knows how to tell this better than anyone in the world.