I had to find out what the fuss was about with this very popular novel and pleasantly wasn’t disappointed. “The Help” makes a great summer read, fast and easy to delve into. I wanted to read it too before the eagerly awaited movie of it releases on Aug. 10, which lists a pretty wide, star-studded cast.
Set in Jackson, Miss. in 1962, during the early days of the civil rights movement, “The Help” tells the story of an inspiring white journalist and author, Eugenia Skeeter Phelan, who secretly interviews a number of black women on what it’s like to work as maids in white households, where they’re deemed good enough to raise white children but not allowed to use the same facilities as whites.
The chapters switch narrators and are told through the eyes of Skeeter and two of the maids, Aibileen and Minny. All three narrators are equally interesting and bring the segregated times and white households vividly to life. Hilly Holbrook, president of the Junior League, is the main menace in town who makes life hell for the maids and those who don’t share her white, elitest views.
I found “The Help” quite hard to put down. Chalk it up to good pacing and to the suspense of what will happen to the black women and Skeeter whose lives are literally on the line. I found the author, Kathryn Stockett, especially brave to put herself in the shoes of the maids and her use of dialect. The novel took a lot of guts to write, but obviously paid off. I found it sugary in a few spots but still able to successfully navigate its way through a minefield on race relations to deliver a pretty heartfelt, vivid tale of the times and the injustices done to black women and of those who boldly resisted despite such grave consequences. Some of the trailers of the movie look more cute than the book comes off being, but I still plan to see it.
