The Help

Sooo there's this book, it's called The Help. Heard of it? I know, it's really small-timey. You've probably never seen it in the window OF EVERY BOOKSTORE EVAR.

So I read it. I know it's a bit controversial: see conversations happening here and reviews happening here.


So, the controversy: here we've got a white woman writing in the voice of three characters, two of whom are black and one of whom is white. The black characters (with an exception or two) have accents and the white characters don't. Yikes. This is tricky territory Stockett is navigating; it's not surprising that she's frustrated/angered some people. Read it yourself: what do you think?

Here's what's true about this book, though: it's REALLY readable. Super page-turny, curl-up-with-some-tea-while-it-rains-and-don't-put-it-down-all-afternoon-long. Ahhhhhhhh. Siiiiiigh. This is the kind of the book that is better than watching a movie; it feels like you're IN the movie. You forget the book in your hands. I love that.

The story is this: Skeeter wants to be a writer and wants to write about something important. With the (slightly unbelievable?) nudging from the (incredibly distant fairy godmother) Magical Woman in New York who's helping Skeeter....essentially because it's nice to do so ("someone helped me once" --not a direct quote, but that's what it boils down to).....Skeeter decides to write about black domestic help in her area. This is at a time when there are marches and riots and violence, so it's not at all easy or safe for the women-- the maids-- she speaks to to do so. But. Skeeter does these interviews and develops relationships, and then wait, watch, and see a bunch of shit go down, much of which will make you hate people and much of which will make you love people and all of which will make you (if you are me) think, GAH, why are we so weird with each other? Why do we treat each other so strangely? We're all PEOPLE, people. Get with it! The relationships not just between races but between people of the same race are mind boggling to me.

Essentially what I mean is... there's some serious bitches in this book. And maybe that's a downside of Stockett's writing: I don't think Hilly, the evilest of the evil characters, is especially well-rounded. The only time we ever see Hilly humanized is through the observation that she's good with her children, but even that leaves something to be desired to a modern day reader (me) who wants a woman to be valued for something other than her ability to pop out and raise baybays.


Read it. It's not inherently the richest tapestry of a book you will ever read; this is no The Time Traveler's Wife. But it's extremely readable and it will make you think. That's a good thing too, no?

Read it OF COURSE if you are interested in the civil rights movement, but also read it if you are:

1. interested in a dissenting personality as far as women's rights go in the 1960s. Skeeter is perhaps not the most ASS KICKING ASS KICKER of all feminists, but she's definitely moving in that direction.


8/10