[Review] The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Published: February 2009/Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam 

Pages: 530

 

Blurb:

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

 
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. 

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

 

*click below to read review. May contain spoilers.* 

Review: 

I really enjoyed reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Within the first few pages, I was quickly engaged and drawn into the story. Stockett has a writing style that immediately lulls readers into experiencing the story first hand. The main characters, Aibilene and Minny in particular, were richly portrayed and it was easy to empathize with their stories and lives. If I evaluate The Help simply as a story, then I have no complaints and it joins my "Absolute Favorites" shelf.

However, if I look more closely in terms of the subject matter, then I must admit to a certain level of discomfort. While I understand that the novel was inspired by Stockett's own special experiences with her family maid, I expect for a work with such strong civil rights/historical undertones to be written more seriously and with more care. I couldn't help, but feel uncomfortable about a white female writing about the treatment of Black maids in the south. It's not the race of the author per say that is my issue. I'm not of the party who believe only members of a particular race can write about said race. I wouldn't have felt this way if not for the level of lightheartedness in Stockett's telling of the story. In addition, there were a couple of minor characters and subplots that I believed to be unnecessary as they pulled readers away from the more important characters and the main story.

In short, I thoroughly enjoyed The Help as a fairly well-written, engaging and emotionally charged story about human relationships. At the same time, I feel that The Help failed to reach its potential as a possible "Important Work of Cultural History" (as Goodreads user, Sparrow, put it).

What are others' thoughts regarding The Help?

[Current Read] The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I finally decided that my next read should be The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I've heard so much about how great both the novel and the movie are. I figured this way I can join in on the fangirling the next time the book is mentioned.

I started reading it on the subway, on my way to meeting some friends for karaoke. I've read only two chapters and I have that tingly feeling one gets when he or she begins a truly awe inspiring book and knows it. I can already tell that Ms. Stockett is a masterful storyteller. One second, I was on the train with Red's "Forever" blasting in my ear, thinking about how late I was and one hand holding the book, the other trying to open up my croissant. The next thing I knew, I was sitting at the kitchen table with Mae Mobley watching Aibileen go about her duties as Ms. Leefolt's housemaid. My croissant was abandoned. I no longer knew what song I was listening to. And the coffee that had been held between my knees grew cold. I cannot remember the last time, I was so quickly, so irrevocably drawn into a story. I was starting to miss the feeling of becoming lost in a world created lovingly by a author's pen (or keyboard, or pencil, or quill). Kathryn manages to take us back in time to a time that is no longer our own (at least not exactly), but there is no disconnect from reality. The story is real. The characters are real. Their emotions, as well as the ones evoked in us as readers...are real. And isn't that all we ask for in a good work of literature? For it to be real, believable, irresistible, and make us feel.