The Help by Kathryn Stockett has been on my "to-read" list for a few months now. Everyone has been raving about it. I'm sure that if you haven't read it yet, someone has recommended it to you. And you can add me to the list, because I'm about to as well.
In the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, 1962, three women have decided they've had enough of "the way things are" in Jackson, Mississippi. Aibileen, a middle-aged black nurse and housekeeper, has raised seventeen white babies, and finds it harder and harder every day to turn a blind eye to the unfairness of it all. Minny, a smart-mouth who has been fired several times, struggles to keep her newest job, while trying to keep the secrets of her latest employers. And Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a twenty-three year old white college graduate and writer, stifles her angry feelings and her dismay at what the world she grew up in has become. Life has dissolved into one big pressure cooker with no vents, and the three of them are about to blow the lid off life in Jackson, forever.
I love this book. Love it. I love the three tones (Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter), and the way that Stockett manages to make three distinct "voices" in her writing (a testimony to how good it was -- usually I hate books told in multiple POVs). Minny was probably my favorite character; I love how she wasn't portrayed as either sinner or saint, just a normal woman with a lot of pent-up anger (and some anger that she refused to pent-up, if truth be told).
Stockett doesn't skirt the issue of racism in the book, and she doesn't sugarcoat it, either. As a child of the 80's who grew up in New England, The Help is worlds away from anything I've ever known in my life, so I can't verify its accuracy personally, but the picture is so vivid. It's amazing, and sad too, the way that some of the white people in the book claim to not be racist, while enforcing the Jim Crow Laws and even inventing some of their own.
At first, I wanted to write that I was disappointed in the ending. But then I realized, it wasn't the ending, it was my own expectations, that were disappointed. The book ended just the way it should have. There really isn't anything that I would change. I also have to add that I was moved to tears at one point. This book is fantastic. I don't know if the progression of the year is making me soft for the ratings, or if I'm just reading a whole lot of really good books. I'm starting to think it's the latter.
Rating: *****
Eventualy I got tired of hearing about how much people liked it and about how good the movie was that I finally broke down and bought it so that I would know what people were talking about. I took about a chapter or two before I really got into the story. The charaters are extremly funny and brave and Kathryn did a great job of writing from the point of view of an African American women. I especially loved when she wrote about her childhood with her own maid. It really completed the story by showing you that she acctually experienced parts of the story herself. I can honestly say that this book will not leave readers minds easily.
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