The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

This is a book that I have been meaning to pick up for a while.... but nothing gets me motivated like seeing a preview for the movie version. If you are a "reader", then you know that you MUST read a book before seeing the movie version or it will be ruined for you. So I borrowed a hardback copy, opened up the pages, and felt myself being completely sucked in. I was worried that Stockett's book would skirt around the real issues, or address them in a condescending way, but she very artfully describes the complex relationships between black and white women in the south during the mid century. She mixes light and humor with impossibly dark and painful situations. Every few chapters, the book changes focus to one of the three main female character - Skeeter (the young white woman who wants to write about the real world of "the help"), Aibileen (the one who believes that change is possible and agrees to help Skeeter, despite great personal risk), and Minnie (the comic relief, but also the one with some of the greatest insight into the life of the "help" and black women in the South). While reading, I came to love aspects of each of these characters, but none more so than Minnie. She has an anger for her situation in life, an interesting relationship with the woman she comes to work for, and an underlying compassion that drives her to help those around her. The book is beautifully written and gracefully handles a complex subject that I think many of us would like to deny ever happened/happens. Pick up your own copy before you head to the movie theater this summer.