Review of The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I spent 20 minutes sobbing clinging to my paperback copy of The Help, as if the New York Times bestseller could understand my outpouring of emotion.  Kathryn Stockett’s The Help is that kind of book—the kind of book I want to start re-reading, even though I just finished it, the kind of book that has such lively characters that I want to know them in real life, and the kind of book that makes me think long after I closed the tear-stained pages.

The Help is one of the best books I have ever read.  In fact, it is my favorite literary fiction, and I feel funny saying that because I feel a deep passion for many of the books I read (and music to which I listen), but this book goes beyond my normal realm of “liked it,” past “loved it,” past my “favorite books shelf,” and straight into “life-changing, best books I’ve ever read.”   The Help will find its home amongst my most personal books.

Stockett’s characters are well-developed (even the minor ones)—Skeeter Phelan, the white writer who gathers the stories of the maids, Aibileen, her friend’s black domestic and Aibileen’s friend, Minny, who find maids willing to tell their anonymous stories to Skeeter.  Each of these three characters tells the story of The Help in alternating chapters, adding her distinctive flavor and voice to the story while moving the plot forward.  This story doesn’t shy away from the South’s racial tension in the early 60’s, nor is it an easy read.  Some moments made me laugh out loud, and other times I cuddled with the tissue box, blowing my nose in a most unladylike fashion (Skeeter’s mom would have been appalled.)

Skeeter, Aibileen, Minny, and their friends will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I will revisit their story often, so I don’t forget what is so beautifully written, and then repeated by Kathryn Stockett in the essay she wrote at the close of the book, “Wasn’t that the point of this book? For women to realize, We are just two people.  Not that much separates us.  Not nearly as much as I’d thought.”  This book taught me that the barriers (or “prisons”) we make between “us” and “them” are truly ours to tear down.  And I’m not talking about just racial barriers, but any barrier that keeps “us” in the way of loving “them.”  Like me, you’ll see the line of separation isn’t much, not nearly as much as you once thought.

*Read how the new movie stacks up against the book at Backseat Writer.com!*