fairy skeletons.: Book Review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

from thenewdorkreviewofbooks.com

Aibileen Clark is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, raising her seventeenth white child. She's always taken orders quietly, but lately it leaves her with a bitterness she can no longer bite back. Her friend Minny Jackson has certainly never held or tongue, or held on to a job for very long, but now she's working for a newcomer with secrets that leave her speechless. And white socialite Skeeter Phelan has just returned from college with ambition and a degree but, to her mother's lament, no husband. Normally Skeeter would find solace in Constantine, the beloved maid who raised her, but Constantine has inexplicably disappeared.

Together, these seemingly different women join to work on a project that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town--to write, in secret, a tell-all book about what it's really like to work as a black maid in the white homes of the South. Despite the terrible risks they will have to take, and the sometimes humorous boundaries they will have to cross, these three women unite with one intention: hope for a better day.

Like The Secret Life of Bees, I didn't expect to like this. I don't usually like historical fiction. I'm sorry. I know I'm a terrible person for it, but still.

I love the narration, especially Aibileen's. It has such a wonderful, natural, dialect-y feel to it. It's very realistic and authentic-sounding.

The protagonists are amazing and the antagonists perfectly awful - just like they should be. Read it. Read it. Read it. You can tell I'm not in an analysis mood today... heh heh heh.