Friday, Apr 3, 2009

Book Review: The Help

Author:       Kathryn Stockett

Publisher:    Amy Einhorn/Putnam/Penguin

ISBN:         978-0-399-15534-5

Website:      www.kathyrnstockett.com

Type:         Fiction:Historical:American

Pages:        464 Hardcover

Purchase:    $10.19 @ Amazon.com (HERE)

The Story

“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.”

(Above excerpt is from the www.kathrynstockett.com)

The Review

Like many other great books about the South and its racial divides, To Kill A Mockingbird, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, and Gone With the Wind, this novel is an epic tale with wisdom, dignity and truth knitted throughout it.  Kathryn Stockett has written a story that encompasses your heart and yet forces to you face some very pure and real truths about the human condition and what our beloved country has experienced.  Even though we are all the same, there was a time not that long ago when people weren’t treated as such.  The thought of having to live through the experience of segregation chills me to the core.  But, it happened and it is real as our history today.

Ms. Stockett really forced me to think about not only what racial differences have done to our history, but to also consider women’s roles in American history.  What stuck with me throughout my read is the truth that a woman’s heart and her love for others has nothing to do with the color of her skin nor the family she derives from.   The essence of a woman has no ties to what money she might possess or who she is married to.  A woman’s heart is like no other and a mother’s heart is as expansive as the sea itself.

I felt such a connection with the characters in The Help.  I came to love Aibileen the most of the three main characters of the story.  She was the one who I could most relate to; I just wanted to sit in her kitchen and share as many stories as she had to tell.  I found much empathy for Skeeter as her friends cast her out of the inner circle for only being true to herself.  I understood Celia and wanted to squeeze the cheeks of little Mae Mobley.  I got angry with Stuart over and over again.  The characters in this novel I could envision as if I were a fly on the wall of each scene. 

By reading about the relationships between the white housewives and their hired maids, I discovered that there was so much ignorance and intolerance amongst a good portion of these white women of the South.  I can’t even imagine thinking some of the thoughts they possessed because it seems so unrational to me.  But, I also discovered that there were also bonds between the white women employers and the black maids that were as precious to them as their own blood relatives… they were family.

This book was an amazing piece of storytelling that provided the reader the ability to forge bonds with the characters, learn about our history, and be reminded of fundamentaal truths.  There were several passages in the book that really made an impact on me:

” ‘But Aibileen’ – Miss Hilly smile real cold – ‘colored people and white people are just so… different.’ She wrinkle up her nose.  I feel my lip curling.  A course we different!  Everybody know colored people and white people ain’t the same.  But we still just people!  Shoot, I even been hearing Jesus had colored skin living out there in the desert.  I press my lips together.”

“… But Little Miss Something slaps her fork down on the table, climbs out of her chair.  ‘I hate white people! And, I’m on tell everybody if I want to!’”

“… ‘Cause that line ain’t there.  Except in Leroy’s head.  Lines between black and white ain’t there neither.  Some folks just made those up, long time ago.  And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too.’”

“Aibileen laughs.  She pats my hand.  ‘All I am saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.’”

“… ‘How come you’re colored, Aibileen?’  Now I’ve gotten this question a few times from my other white kids.  I used to just laugh, but I want to get this right with her.  ‘Cause God made me colored,’ I say, ‘And there ain’t no other reason in the world.’”

“Baby Girl get her bed.  ‘What’s wrong, Baby?  What happen?’ ‘I colored myself black,’ she cried. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘With markers you did?’ I picked up her hand but she didn’t have no ink on her skin.  ‘Miss Taylor said to draw what we like about ourselves best.’ I saw then a wrinkled, sad-looking paper in her hand.  I turned it over and sure enough, there’s my baby white girl done colored herself black. ‘She said black means I got a dirty, bad face.’ She plant her face in her pillow and cried something awful.  Miss Taylor.  After all the time I spent teaching Mae Mobley how to love all people, not judge by color.  I feel a hard fist in my chest because what person out there don’t remember they first-grade teacher? Maybe they don’t remember what they learn, but I’m telling you, I done raised enough kids to know, they matter.” 

On Sher’s “Out of Ten Scale:”

I absolutely loved this book!  Don’t get me wrong, there were also sad points and pieces of the story that just made me damn mad!  But, when a piece of literary fiction makes you feel and think… and, even outrage… you know that you’ve got a tremendously well written book in front of you.  My congratulations to Ms. Stockett for writing such a terrific book and I wish her nothing but success with it.  Based on my rating, this book is getting A Novel Menagerie’s “Guaranteed Good Book” Seal of Approval!  For the genre Fiction:American History, I am going to rate this book a 10 OUT OF 10. 

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