THE HELP - A Review by Trudi Cohen

             The Help, by Kathryn Stockett  is set in the early 1960’s “Mad Men” time but there’s no nostalgia to this novel.  Some stories are told about how the white women treated their maids like shit. There’s even a running focus on toilet humor, how one white woman refuses even to go to the same bathroom as her maid or any maid. So, she’s okay with the woman cooking for her and cleaning her pots and making her bed, but she can’t sit on the same toilet because of “diseases”? This character Hilly is a little over the top and full of contradictions—she campaigns for her friends and neighbors to get extra toilets for the maids, yet she also chairs a fundraising dinner for the “Poor Starving Children of Africa” . She’s nice to her children, but truly mean to the women around her.  We never know Hilly as well as we know Aibileen or Minny or Miss Skeeter. The story is told from three points of view: Aibileen, who works for one of the ladies in the bridge club, Miss Lefoot, Minny, who has a hard time getting a job because of her mouth and Miss Skeeter who has just graduated college and wants to write for a living but doesn’t know how to find her career. Miss Skeeter’s story could be told in any romance, detective or science fiction novel. Pick her up and she’s the same character anywhere, she is the substitute for the writer and she comes back from her college years missing the maid, the mother figure who raised her, who is dismissed without explanation, and she vaguely wants things to change in her town.  Aibileen and Minny know what has happened to Miss Skeeter’s maid, but they don’t want to cross the color line to tell her.

The story heats up with the civil rights news happening around them in Jackson Mississippi. There’s the shooting of Medgar Evers, there’s the four black students trying to get into the college campus on television and the rioting by the racist white people. When one of the maids gets falsely accused of stealing, it is a call to action to the other maids.

I was very entertained while reading this novel, I especially enjoyed Minny’s voice because she seemed to me to be the most flesh and blood character. She was sick and tired of being pushed around, and also really afraid for good reason of a lot of things.  There is even a little bit of an unexpected romance for Miss Skeeter from an unexpected source. I felt the Aibileen character was too much of what Spike Lee calls the “magic negro”—the African American character, all wise and all knowing, who helps the white character to understand the burdens of life—although Aibileen does have her personal problems, she reveals them to the white character after a long struggle.

          The Help is a book about trusting the inner wisdom we are all born with, our sense of what’s right and wrong over the attitudes of everyone else who says that this is the way the world is and that it’s not going to change. In my lifetime, I never thought I would see a black president elected or gay marriage instituted in New York State.  I will admit that there are some uneven parts to the book: while every section begins with part of the story told from one point of view: Minny, Aibileen or Miss Skeeter—the Benefit for “The Poor Starving Children of Africa” is told from third person observer and while it moves the story along, it confused me because I felt there was no point of view attached to it and I felt that it was a section thrown in without editing. There are lines around the chapter, separating it from the rest of the novel  and I wonder about other reviews that don’t mention this feature. It’s like finding a section in a report with a different font.

            Reviews from our book club: Everyone pretty much loved the book, loved the voices and when I came across a woman reading the book while waiting for a train, she expressed infinite pleasure. This review is for her. I don’t want to reveal endings or spoil the book for anyone currently reading it.

Ratings:

(Out of a rating of 1-5 Wine Glasses)

Conversation : 5 wine glasses

Enjoyment 4.5 wine glasses

Refer to other people 5 wine glasses.

Clearly we need to drink more wine to enjoy this book.