Book Review ~ Standing in the Rainbow

I can't believe it but it is true.  With just over two weeks left on the Spring Reading Thing challenge, I am done.  Every book on my list was read and not left off and there was even an extra one in there.  Non-fiction to boot.  Yay me.

 I finished up on a wonderful note with Fannie Flagg's "Standing in the Rainbow".  This was my first book by this author and I have to say I really enjoyed it.  Though I left it to the end because it seemed a bit daunting with it's number of pages, 496 to be exact, I seemed to fly right through it once I started.

Standing in the Rainbow is a story of the life stories of the folks in a small town in Missouri.  It starts in the 1940's and wraps up in the '90's.  The characters are richly written and varied.  From Dorothy who broadcasts a radio show from her own livingroom that touches people all the way into other states, to the gospel singing Oatman family, to Hamm Sparks the tractor salesman turned Governor to his wife Betty Raye who was an Oatman and just wanted a quiet settled life, to Tot, the hairdresser who turned people's hair purple and just couldn't get a break in life.

It's a very heartwarming read with moments touching every emotion.  You are drawn right into the members of this little town and become invested with their lives.  You rejoice with them, are sad for them, get angry with some of their circumstances and want to have a good chat with them when they make bad decisions.

In spite of all the varied lives and the details thereof, I never felt the book bogged down or got confusing, it moved at a really good pace, slowed down when needed and clipping right along when it had to.  Though there were parts in the story of certain characters that were decidedly not in keeping my own values, they were a part of the story and happens all the time in "real" life and the author did not gratuitously spend time getting into the physical details of it but rather the emotional aspect of it.  All in all, I loved the story and will read another Fannie Flagg book soon.

For all the reviews from my spring reading thing challenge you can go here and scroll through numbers 6 -16.