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I heard parts of an audio version of this book a few months ago and wanted to buy it to read the whole thing together. I finally bought it two weeks ago. I finished it yesterday. I don’t know if it’s the best book I ever read, it’s certainly not the worst book.

The Help is the story of a young white Southern woman who teams up with the maids of the city of Jackson, MS, right at the start of the civil rights movement. Fed up with the way that her friends treat their servants, empowered by a college education, and emboldened by the maids’ anger at the way they’ve been treated, she sets out to write a book that anonymously airs the stories of how white ladies treat their maids. They know the danger of complaining about the system, but the maids’ dignity, and Skeeter’s desire to be more than just another Junior League belle with a family silver pattern push them forward.

The strong points of the book are that it really does give one an idea where the civil rights movement may have started. How many indignities is one supposed to take in life? Why was it ever acceptable to tell another human they had to use the bathroom in the garage, or eat outside, or wash their hands with bleach? Why were people so convinced this was right? Hilly Holbrook is the perfect villain: ruthless in her treatment of anyone who crosses her path, be it the maids who spoke out, Skeeter for questioning the status quo, or even Celia, whose only mistake is to have married one of Hilly’s former boyfriends. The book makes us ask: Do we see things the way they really are, or the way we want them to be?

Perhaps the best part of the book though, is the beautiful depiction of the relationships between the nannies and the children. Aibeleen loves Mae Mobley and tries, in her own gentle way, to teach her to see beyond color. Getting a store to change a policy is a small victory, changing the world through a child is winning the war.

But there are troublesome problems with the book. Mainly how weak a
ARABS ISRAEL Jun 1