La Bene Vita

Book Review: The Help

Written by Kathryn Stockett, The Help is a novel about three Mississippi women during the civil rights movement. Skeeter is a young, white recent college graduate with journalistic ambition, who still lives at home with her parents on a cotton farm. Aibileen and Minny are black maids and best friends, working for two best friends (Elizabeth and Hilly) until Minny is fired by her boss, Hilly. Skeeter is in the same social circle as Elizabeth and Hilly, but soon finds herself an outcast when Hilly, profoundly anti-civil rights, catches clues about Skeeter's secret project: A book about what it's like to work as a black maid for a white family.

1. Characterization: The three main characters, as well as all the supporting characters, were remarkably believable. The majority of the book was told in first person by the three characters, and I could have identified each character by her voicing even without the helpful chapter titles.

2. Setting: Every other paragraph, something was happening politically or socially that defined the setting, which was Mississippi in the early 1960's. Skeeter's mother, after much resistance, finally agreed to install an air conditioner in the house. Martin Luther King was marching and President Kennedy was assassinated. A new singer by the name of Bob Dylan was singing The Times They Are A Changin. These events were not just background stories; they affected the way the characters lived their lives. More amazing, and even baffling to me in this age of portable electronic devices, was the typewriter and correction fluid bottle Skeeter used to write her book. When the trio decided at the eleventh hour to insert Minny's chocolate pie story, I wondered if Skeeter would have to re-number all the pages manually.

3. Plot: Poignant and powerful. So poignant, that when I looked up the author's website and read the book synopsis (after finishing the book), I choked up a little.

Read it. It's amazing.