Review: The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Here's another run-out-and-read-it for you.

Kathryn Stockett's The Help is a beautifully and honestly written tale of african-american servitude in the 1960s south, and one journalist-hopeful's documentation of it.

One of the things I loved about this novel was its varying viewpoint, which rotated between 22 year-old Skeeter, a well-off white girl who had just returned home from college with a mind full of plans but a reality full of nothing much, and several of the domestic servants she comes to know and who slowly share their lives with her as she writes down their stories into an extremely subversive narrative of what it is like to be a black domestic in the deep south. Through Skeeter's voice we hear of her struggles to cope with her increasingly strained friendships with the other young elite of Jackson, most of whom have stepped in to hold the reins of oppression where their parents left off, and their eventual ostrasization of her from society. Through Abiline, Minny, and others, we hear what they dealt with both as 'free' help, raising white children while their own children were cared for by relatives or given away, navigating segregation and the dangerous waters of unwritten social rules that could change at any moment. The danger that they and Skeeter are in as they undertake this project, and the slow, painful road to trust, are tense and lovely.

I could see these people in my mind as I read the book. Stockett's care with detail is such that it was very like having a movie playing in my mind, and the picture was complete. I wanted the book to continue past its ending, which was satisfying and appropriate in itself, so I could continue to follow these women as they went through desegregation and the strife of the future.

Rating: five stars. Excellent reading.