Book Review: The Help

Book: The Help
Author: Kathryn Stockett

This book was published February of 2009 but it wasn't until last month that I heard about it in passing...then about 4 more times within a week. A friend of mine Anne who hates reading so much she bought the kindle, not for the convenience of carrying books electronically, but so that it could read to her, told me she loved The Help and couldn't put it down. It was then that I realized I had to read this book.

I was put off immediately by the title of the book; it just rubbed me the wrong way...then there was the grammatical error in the first sentence. I figured I was done. I forced myself to read the first chapter and then I understood.

Set during the civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but were not allowed to use the bathroom in the house or even sit inside to eat a meal. The Help is about a young white woman in the early 1960s who becomes interested in the plight of the black woman; the maids that every family has working for them. She writes their stories about mistreatment, abuse, and the heartbreaks of working in white families' homes. The story grabs you and doesn't let you go. You can smell the melted tar on the Mississippi roads, the exhaustion in the cotton fields, the grits burning on the stove. The theme is the overpowering will of human beings to survive against all odds - because of the color of their skin. It is a heart-wrenching account and you will never fondly remember the times of the Jim Crow laws (if you ever did). The pure, down and out bitchery of the white women who become dissatisfied with their maids and proceed to ruin their lives is portrayed vividly. The desperation of the maids' circumstances is truly touching.

You fall in love with each of the characters and find yourself at a crossroads between wanting to hear more about the pain and suffering each of these women felt daily and praying that the atrocities of such a time are untrue.

The Help is one of the most touching stories I have read in a long time.