allthepage

I had read a couple of short magazine reviews of The Help by Kathryn Stockett before I picked it up, both rather noncommittal, so I was curious but not expecting anything in particular. Like the reviewers before me, I was neither bowled over, nor disappointed. The Help is a look at the servants inside white (or should that be capitalized?) households in the South during the 1960’s, post-slavery, but certainly not post-slave-sensibility in many homes. It is a sensitive portrayal, but not particularly emotional, or thought-provoking, nor does it delve very deeply into the personal lives of the women it purports to tell the stories of. Instead it offers glimpses of them and of the woman who chooses to take on the controversial and socially devastating task of writing a book–the book within the book, as it were–about “the help.” The narrative jumps between a young white woman in her early twenties, an aspiring writer, affectionately known as Skeeter, who hopes that this backdoor chronicle will be her entree into the publishing world, and two of the maids who participate in the book. We learn bits and pieces about them from their current positions, and from the stories they choose to recount for the book, but there is a lack of depth and the novel is ultimately unsatisfying. A good read, but not a great one.

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