The Help

this will broaden your horizon.

After a long time reading Ahern's magical romance and Patterson's detective crime, plus several failed attempts to read classic literatures, I took a chance to buy this book, THE HELP. My only reference was the New York Times Bestsellers List, which is pretty reliable with book-buying. It isn't romance/police story, it's a drama about segregation in Mississippi. The other thing that attracted me was the cover. For your information, I do judge a book by it's cover :D. My philosophy is if the cover designer made such an effort on a book, it must me a very good book. Sometimes this belief failed me, but not with THE HELP.

Written by first time writer Kathyrn Stockett, it is the story about the lives of three different women in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960's, when the era was segregation. The first woman to tell her story is Aibileen, a colored maid for Mr. and Mrs. Leefolt and their 'baby girl' Mae Mobley. We are introduced to a maid's life in the white community, attending to the child, when her father goes to work and her mother making hair appointments. The second woman is Minny another colored, sass-mouth maid the white community and Aibileen's friend. After her master moved to a senior home, she becomes jobless. Her previous behavior has landed her in hot water and that's a bad thing for a maid who's looking for a new job. The third woman is Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan, a white university educated aspiring writer. Landing a job as cleaning columnist certainly wasn't Skeeter's intention. She wanted to do more than that, while trying so hard to fine a man to marry to make her parent's happy.

Each woman started living very different life but somehow connected. Aibileen helped Minny find another job, and Skeeter is a friend of Mrs. Elizabeth Leefolt and their 'circle' of socialites, including the dreadful Mrs. Hilly Holbrook. The three women was about to do the unthinkable to the society: persuing freedom. The books basically tells about how they live their lives, their fear, their stand for justice and human rights.

In an odd way I was so psyched to read the book, because I love books which exposed the power of women. The story is believable, I swear I gasped and frowned with anger from time to time. I have no idea what it was really back then but it sure tells how sad the segregations can be. The writer successfully captured what a colored maid and race in general would feel in times like that, where everything had to be seperated: buses, hospitals, bathrooms; and if one failed to follow orders, one can get beat up and received fatal consequences. It also showcase the irony surronding the era, where these people supposedly raising money for starving kids in Africa but treated the colored in their own hometown badly. Also the life of white ladies around that time with all the gossips, rumors and lies.

The language used also seems authentic. The Aibileen parts, the author wrote with the language used by women from the south, ain't so much paying attention to grammar. I love to play it in my mind and made up a terrible southern accent while reading Aibileen's conversations. It's very easy to read, too, not many of high level vocabulary, based on real conversations people would use.

I couldn't recommend this book enough. I adore this, one of my favorites. It shows the truth about the terrible events that took place in the past and opened our eyes with humility about the sensitive subject. It is about hope, perceverence, justice and better life. Although, the end failed my expectations but it has been a very eye opening time reading THE HELP.

always,
hana.

PS: next book, Little Bee.