Something to Look Forward To

Something to Look Forward To 

By Fannie Flagg 

Random House, 2025 

Hardcover, $29 

Genre: Short fiction 

Reviewed by Jay Lamar  

What do Velma Ruth Vanderhoff, a lifelong resident of Cottonwood, KS, and a “sweet-looking apple dumpling of a lady,” and Special Agent William Frawley, recently deployed to Earth by his boss, the “chief galactic observer on Planet 8676,” have in common? Well, for one thing, they both spring from the vivid imagination of one of Alabama’s most beloved writers, Fannie Flagg. Her brand-new collection, Something to Look Forward To, released today by Random House, features a large cast of quirky, entertaining characters, including Velma and Bill, as he’s known to Debbie, his first human friend, who introduces him to each of Baskin-Robbins’s 31 ice cream flavors. (Love is sweet!)  

Flagg opens Something to Look Forward To with a note to the reader. In it, she reports that her characters and their funny, kooky, sometimes gently heartbreaking stories are based on her long and close observation of humankind. The rewards of such dedicated study are abundant and include, for instance, Darla Ann Womble’s 38 relatives in and around Pot Luck, AR, who “grab at chicken feed when they might have had caviar.” And Mrs. Marion Thornton Smith of Birmingham, keeper of the family history and artifacts—”You owe it to your ancestors to caretake their beloved valuables, for heaven’s sake”—who devises a plan to avoid the painful and embarrassing process of downsizing. Practical joke-playing priests, Velma’s excruciatingly politically correct daughter in Berkeley, a crime-fighting beautician, and adorable chickens are just a few of the other wonderful personalities in store for you, gentle reader. 

Besides Planet 8676, which bookends the collection, the stories are set in a wide variety of earthly locations, including Texas, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and other spots home to the endlessly entertaining human race. They take place between 1958 and 2025, with most of the individual stories bearing both a specific location and a date. What unifies them is Flagg’s deep and positive faith in humanity. Hers is a world in which mistakes can be redeemed, youth and indiscretion are forgiven, and the wicked get their just rewards. Like Sally in “Beware of Weathermen,” set in 2016 in Milwaukee, we find that “maybe things really do turn out the way they are supposed to.” Or they do at least often enough to keep us hoping and reading.  

Something to Look Forward To is Flagg’s twelfth book. Her earlier titles include Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, her first novel, which spent ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and, of course, the beloved Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café (36 weeks on the NYT bestseller list). Her adaptation of the latter book for the blockbuster movie of the same name earned Flagg the Scripter Prize for best screenplay. A recipient of the Harper Lee Lifetime Achievement Award, she has also been inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame.  

Flagg’s positivity is contagious, and she shows us how important it is to find humor in whatever crazy thing our kind gets up to. In a recent AL.com interview with Kelly Kazek, she says that she has tried to retire from writing, but ideas and colorful characters keep coming to her and fans keep asking. After a lifetime of making us laugh, she can’t say if Something to Look Forward To is her final book, but let’s hope not. We need that laughter now more than ever.  

Jay Lamar is co-editor of Old Enough: Southern Women Artists and Writers on Creativity and Aging, published last year by the University of Georgia Press.