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The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
genre: historical fiction
This is my second read; the first time, I thought The Help was nonfiction so I was quite disappointed when the delusion was shattered. I’ve read some other things in between to cleanse the palate and came back to it with a different expectation. Read the full review to find out if the second read was better than the first.
Synopsis from Goodreads
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.
Review
I saw the movie first, which is the only way I can explain how I missed the many signs that The Help is fiction. I didn’t read the synopsis and apparently missed “a novel” scribbled on the cover. Instead, I thought the movie was about how the book was written, so I expected the book to be the compilation of stories from the maids. I wanted real-life stories about experiences far outside my experience.
What I got was a book similar to the movie. It’s about a white woman trying to make her mark in the publishing industry and get her start as a writer. It’s about colored maids, how they’re treated, and the complicated dynamic between white families and the colored help. When the movie came out, there were complaints and speculation about it being written by a rich white woman whose family had a colored maid, which Stockett addresses at the end of the audio book.
Perhaps it’s because I’m white and I didn’t live during the segregation, but I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal that The Help is written by a white woman. If we limit authors to writing their own race, we wouldn’t have To Kill a Mockingbird or Antony and Cleopatra. It’s ridiculous to think authors should not write other races. The argument is that a white woman whose family employed a colored maid can never accurately give a voice to the maid. Even Stockett admits that this terrified her, but how is that different than a white person writing historical fiction about pilgrims and Indians? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.
The Story
It was beautiful and the ending made me cry. Screw the angry critics, I’m glad Stockett wrote the book and I don’t care that she’s white. I would have liked it better if it was nonfiction because I liked seeing good stories of white people taking care of their maids along with the bad. I’m not going to pretend that it wasn’t awful, separate but equal was far from equal, but it’s nice to see that other side.
Stockett also had a great grasp of how to teach kids. Aibileen’s lessons were creative and digestable to a three year old. Overall well written and poigniant. My favorite character was one of the white women, Cecilia. She “didn’t see the lines,” as Minnie put it. She sat with her maid at lunch, protected Minnie from an attack, and didn’t understand that she was in a different leaugue from the women with whom she wanted to spend time.
Book vs. Movie
I liked the characters in the movie better, particularly Skeeter’s Mom. Mrs. Feeling fires the Maid who raised her daughter and had been with the family for twenty-some-odd years (or longer, I don’t remember). In the book, she tries to justify her actions and shows no remourse, while in the movie she regrets what she did even though she is unable to fix it. She also has an amazing line about Two Slice Hillie in the movie that wasn’t in the book.
Overall, 4 out of 5 stars. I liked it, I’d reread it, but it didn’t bow my socks off.
-Eliabeth Hawthorne
Your review seriously makes me wonder how you would feel about my book. I read “The Help”, and I thought it was a little cheesy relative to “real life” in the South during segregation which I did grow up in. I know it was supposed to be humorous. The stereotypes were there, but the book just did not carry substance for them to me. My book is a faction novel. A book that is a fictional account based on a true story. If you would like to read it, send me your email and let me know and I will send you the ARC promo code for your reader. If you do not have a reader. The paperback POD should be out in October.
My mail for business is sknicholls@gmail.com
Oops, sorry. i just read that you are closed for further reviews, maybe later. I will keep checking back.
Thank you for your interest. I really wish I could review works from other authors, but all of the books I’ve reviewed this year have been audiobooks as that’s all I have time for. I don’t usually read historical fiction, but if you catch me at the right time and give me a paperback, I would make an exception. I have to warn you though, in addition to being closed for reviews, I’m behind 7 book reviews for author I’ve already agreed to.
I do hope that you keep checking back though.
I will, and the paperback is due out next month. I will get your address and send you an autographed copy to read at your leisure. No hurries. My business email: sknicholls@gmail.com
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I’m glad you gave it a second chance.
The profound sub-story in The Help, isn’t one of prejudice and discrimination. It’s the mother-daughter bond between Aibileen and Mae Mobley. Most of the reviews I’ve read missed that and it was swept completely under the rug by the movie for the sake of a bickering girls’ club and the “Terrible Awful”. It’s a beautiful story of the natural bond between people with constant allusions that all the maids go through it and have to come to terms with it in their own way.
One of the problems we face writing characters is that they all fit one stereotype or another, and anyone who wants to throw the stereotype judgement label at a story has instant ammunition. I was really glad to see you didn’t mention it in your review! You deserve special review kudos for that. I struggled a lot with The Price of a Flower when I wrote it for fear that Leon would face that kind of criticism, and It’s rewarding to hear you stick up for what I did.
I am too. It made such a difference to read it in the mindset of a novel.
I agree about the sub-plot. Though I didn’t put it in my review, it resonated for me in modern times. I was fortunate enough to have a stay at home mom who knew what she was doing, but as a culture we don’t seem to want to raise our own kids anymore. I still think it takes a village to raise a child, but a teacher’s job is to educate my child in science, history, math. It is my job to teach ethics, the difference between right and wrong, religion, to pass on my views about sex before marriage, higher education, and work ethic. We like to blame it on Brittany Spears and MTV, but they are just a scapegoat. Money and a nanny cannot replace parents. Just look at the secret lessons Aibileen was able to slip in. Thankfully in this case, they were positive lessons, but it can just as easily go the other way.
Haters are going to hate. Can you imagine if authors only wrote characters of their same race? How quickly would we accuse them of being racist? Books would no longer contain diversity, mixed race characters could never mingle or marry. It would be far worse. On top of that (you know I have to bring this up) what would happen to fantasy! Drows, elves, magicians, nope sorry. People need to pull the stick out of their butts and accept that fiction authors aren’t always pitch perfect or historically accurate, because it’s made up.
As authors, we have to remember that you’re never going to write anything that is loved by everyone. If you do, you didn’t write anything worthwhile because the only thing that even has that potential is meaningless fluff.
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