Book Review: The Help

“Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.” 

I can't be the only person that has been told that they "HAVE" to read The Help with about as much urgency that one would be told that they are in the midst of a pulmonary embolism and they must get to the hospital immediately.  So, I read it.  But not quick enough that if I did have a pulmonary embolism it would have mattered.

The Help follows the story of three point of view characters, Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter (actually named Eugenia), who live in Jackson, Mississippi in the mid 1960s.  Aibileen and Minny are both black domestics, and Skeeter is a white, society girl.  However, after college, Skeeter has started to not be so keen on the way that blacks are treated.  She wants to be a writer, and starts to write a book about the life of black domestics.  She especially starts to analyze that crazy dichotomy: whites in the South are raised by blacks and they love them like their mothers.  But at the same time, they are raised to hate blacks and treat them like a lower, germy species.  It analyzes this, as well as the perils of being white and working for the civil rights movement, the perils of being black and risking everything and everything in between.

I thought that it really was a good book.  People say that it is their favorite book in the world, and I don't know that I'd go quite that far, however, it honestly is good.  The characters are developed and realistic, even their "villain"  Hilly Holbrook, and convincing villains are hard to come by.  The thoughtful questions of the relationships between black and white, as well as social class in general (they address the unspoken line between high class and low class whites as well), are thoughtful and well-handled.  There are some people who claim that Kathryn Stockett had no business in approaching a topic that she knows nothing about.  Well, if you read the extra writing in the back, you learn that she does know the topic.  She wrote an extra piece in the back that talks about her life growing up in Mississippi in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and her relationship to her black maid, Demetrie.  In that piece you learn that, essentially, Skeeter is a reflection of Kathryn Stockett, and that Demetrie was split into two pieces and then, voila, Minny and Aibileen were created.

My only complaint is that the chapters from Minny's and Aibileen's perspectives try to mimic black speech.  However, both Minny and Aibileen are literate and wouldn't write that way, and when you try to write an accent, it gets annoying.  "Law, ain't thar all kinds a people," is just distracting and kind of demeaning.  You don't do it in Skeeter's chapters, and let's be honest, she is from Jackson and would have an accent.  A different accent, but you are writing, "I daon't knaow what it is yer talkin' about" for her?  No.  That would be my only criticism. 

4 out of 5, but it's really close to a perfect score.