Can't Wait to Get to Heaven (Flagg) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
You can't help but love this book. It's warm, funny, and at times a real belly-guffaw.....Eighty-something Elner Shimfissle falls off a ladder and lands in an emergency room, vascillating between this world and the next. Her death, or near death (which is it?), leads to a meditation for the living, what constitutes a good life? 
A LitLovers LitPick (Oct '07)


What saves this book from being more sugary than Neighbor Dorothy's Heavenly Caramel Cake is Flagg's unerring eye for human foibles.
Charlotte Hays - The Washington Post


(Audio version.) The only thing more enjoyable than reading a Fannie Flagg novel is having Flagg read it aloud herself. A born storyteller, Flagg is a marvelous reader with a warm, welcoming Alabama accent. She immediately puts listeners at ease, priming them for an engrossing yarn that will mix laugh-out-loud hilarity with unabashed sentiment in a novel as thoughtful as it is delightful. Returning to Elmwood Springs, Miss. (the setting of two previous novels), Flagg focuses on a handful of days following octogenarian Elner Shimfissle's fatal fall from a tree. As listeners check in on various residents in town to see how they're reacting to the news and remembering how their lives were touched by the old woman, Flagg alternates bite-size chapters detailing Elner's journey to the afterlife. Flagg completely embodies her delightful characters, adapting a slight vocal scratch for eternally optimistic Elner, a flatter drawl for the ever-complaining hairdresser Tot and a sweet innocence as Elner's hilariously nervous niece, Norma. An uplifting delight.
Publishers Weekly