The lessons in “Can’t Wait To Get to Heaven” (Random House, $25.95), Fannie Flagg’s funny and utterly charming new novel, are down-home simple but effective: Enjoy your time on Earth. Be nice. Eat cake. Remember you don’t have to be rich or famous to touch other lives in a profound way. And take care that you don’t meet your Maker in a ratty old bathrobe, because wouldn’t you just die of embarrassment if you weren’t already dead?
Flagg honed her cheerful wisdom in the bright comic novels “Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!” and “Standing in the Rainbow,” which, like “Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven,” involve small-town Elmwood Springs, Mo., where Neighbor Dorothy’s living-room radio show once ruled the airwaves. It’s the sort of town where, should you fall off a ladder after surprising a nest of wasps in your fig tree, word of the mishap travels so fast you’d almost expect someone to be there to catch you before you hit the ground.
The tumble happens to octogenarian Elner Shimfissle, who wakes up in the hospital and decides to take a little nap before confronting her excitable niece Norma, who is sure to raise Cain about her being on the ladder in the first place. Instead, though, Elner finds herself in a strange, new place with a lot of familiar people.
Despite its avid focus on mortality, “Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven” shares none of the darker themes of Flagg’s most memorable novel, “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe,” which touched on racism and spousal abuse in 1930s Alabama.
Although it, too, involves a secret crime, “Heaven” is a gentler book, a feel-good testament to the simple joys of life.
Flagg can wring a grin from the worst cynic, whether she’s writing about Elner’s unabashed adoration of Thomas Edison — “She personally celebrated his birthday every year by turning on all her electrical appliances at once and leaving them on all day” — or the fears of Tot Whooten, owner of Tot’s Tell It Like It Is beauty parlor, for her useless children.
“If there was a fool within fifty miles, they had either married it or had numerous offspring with it. Tot had begged her children to please stop breeding.”
