Thanks to A for choosing such a great book club book! The Help has been on my to-read list for quite a while, but other books kept getting moved to the top of the stack. So glad I finally got to read this one!
Book Review:
The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
The Help is Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel set in the 1960s, about the race relations. The Help follows the lives and stories of three women over the course of a year or two – two “colored” maids and one recent white college graduate, all living in Jackson, Mississippi.
Skeeter comes home from college – the sole woman in her group of friends unmarried and looking for a job, as a journalist. She sets off to anonymously write a book about the colored help – their experiences and feelings about their jobs and their lives. There are happy stories and sad stories. Stories of racism and stories of a kind of friendship. Skeeter’s liberal leanings end up isolating her, putting both herself and the women who are interviewed all put themselves and their families at risk in hope of truth and change.
The Help was enjoyable, the characters likable. The stories told by both Skeeter and the maids evoked a wide range of feelings – a bit of laughter, some sadness and joy.
Grade: A