The Help by Kathryn Stockett

It appears that this book it out of sequence and I do apologise to the readers and followers of this blog.

About the Author: Kathryn Stockett was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Alabama with a degree in English and Creative Writing, she moved to New York City where she worked in magazine publishing and marketing for nine years. She currently lives in Atlanta with her family. The Help is her first novel.

What we thought of it: Nearly all the group thought that it was a very brave book to write. The story itself was about a group of married white women and their black maids. The maids generally work long hours and also raise the children within their care. 'Skeeter' returns from University and unlike the women that she went to school with and her mother she wants more form life than a man and a ring on her finger. She wants to be a journalist. She normally seeks solace with Constantine her maid but whilst she was away Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell her where she has gone. Abileen 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.

Some members of the group considered Skeeter to be taking an extreme risk to write an account of life with a white family in Missippi at that time from a black woman's perspective. Abileen the maid also took that risk as she may be unemployable should it become known what she was doing. She had already lost her son who was attached when others looked the other way. The apartheid that existed at that time shocked some of the group at the realisation that this was within our life time and only in the 1960s. Hilly and her friends being rude to the maids and believing that they were dirty, also sharing this with their children. The turning point for Skeeter was Hilly's project for all the black maids to have separate bathroom outside of the house as 'they carry different diseases' from white people.

Some members of the group felt that the racist themes and the injustice of apartheid were sensitively dealt with in the novel. Each event relaying the racist theme through the interplay of the relationships between Hilly and her friends and also the interplay between each of the characters and the maid. It was interesting to note that Minny who after losing her job in town because she could not keep her mouth shut, found a job with a newcomer to the town. Minny's new employer is not influenced by Hilly and her friends as she is also an outcast and despite her efforts does not 'fit' within the social group and is not accepted into the social circlw.

Skeeter meets with Abileen and Minny to write the book and includes several anecdotes from whilst they were working with Hilly and her friends. Although Skeeter is discreet working at night she has a near miss where she leaves her satchel with her notes in it at Hilly's. Minny is a fantastic cook and one of the stories she tells relates to a time when she was in Hilly;s employ and she bakes pie into which she puts faeces. Hilly eats two pieces. When Skeeter eventually publishes her book it is this event, that despite the names being changed to lightly disguise the town and it's dwellers, that Hilly recognises herself. At which point she insists that Abileen is dismissed from her employer who is one of Hilly's friends and fronts out the humiliation.

It is difficult to judge whether it was Skeeter's intention to have an underlying theme of racial equality or whether it was a bi-product of a selfish act in order to have an exclusive and controversial story to make her name in journalism. Did she consider the fall out and the impact that it had on the Abileen and her friends? Apart from the obvious initial embarrassment did it really have an impact locally in addressing racism at that time? Was this the intention solely to escape from her ailing mothers clutches and her boyfriend who on hearing of the content of her book breaks off the relationship. Ironically Skeeter also discovers that her mother had direct involvement in Constantine's disappearance.

The book now has been turned into a movie. By all accounts the story has been re-produced in a light hearted way with much emphasis on the style and the humour. The film skirts over the issue of racism which is the fundamental theme of the book. It is difficult to understand how this issue can be avoided when it is the core of the civil rights movement in America. Is it because the primary purpose of the film a bit like Skeeter's book is that it needs to be a Box Office success.

There are no choices at the end of this review. However the next book in this blog will be The Snow Geese by William Fiennes