The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Each year the Deschutes County Public Library picks a novel and encourages the whole community to read it. This year’s “A Novel Idea” is The Help. This novel is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960’s and focuses on the lives of black maids in white households.

This was a very interesting novel to read. It was not a tradition to have maids where I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and so this is a window into a whole different life where a woman invites another woman into her house to clean it and to raise her children. Added to the mix is that the maids were always black and that segregation was in full force during this time period. One of the maids in the story, Aibileen, has to listen to a discussion about building a separate bathroom for her in the garage so that she won’t “contaminate” the inside bathrooms.

The main plot is that a white woman, Skeeter, has returned home and is hoping to break into journalism. She sees how Aibileen is treated at her friend’s house and comes up with the idea of writing the stories of black maids. Aibileen agrees to do it and after much coercing and some traumatic events finds other maids that are also willing to talk with Skeeter. During this time period Medgar Evers is shot in Jackson and the author brings that into the story. It highlights the danger these maids are exposing themselves to by simply telling their stories, even anonymously.

It did take me some time to get into the dialect used in parts of the story. The story is told by alternating from the points of view of Skeeter, Aibileen, and another maid Minny. I also found it hard to believe the characterization of some of the white women in the story. For example, Skeeter’s friend, Elizabeth, seems to really dislike her own child. It is an interesting look into the everyday lives of people who were not actively engaged in the civil rights movement, yet were impacted by it, either by trying to keep the old ways of segregation or by trying to live in a different, and at that time, unacceptable way.

In looking at the events the library will be putting on around this book, it is great to see there will be some discussions about segregation and civil rights leaders as well as demonstrations of Southern cooking. I’m hoping they’ll add some events for kids.

Escape to Books

End-of-the-Summer Book Blahs

Usually I read two or three books and then stumble across one that I am interested enough in to write more about. That has not happened lately. I was in the midst of a promising one, Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner, when it hit a wrong turn for me. I can recommend some of her other books as light, fun fare set in Philadelphia. Little Earthquakes is about four new moms bonding, probably falling in that maligned chick lit category.


I also recently read The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black. The protagonist, pathologist Garret Quirke, seems an interesting character in his dealings with family and friends, but the murder mystery part was only so-so. The book spent a lot of time hinting at the previous book, Christine Falls, and events that took place therein. I wish I would have read that book first and maybe that would have helped me place all the characters in context, instead of spending my time wondering what had happened.


I keep a list of all the books I plan to read. It is occasionally months before I get to some of them. I had Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch under novels. I was quite surprised to pick up the very hefty book subtitled America in the King Years 1954-63. I am not going to be able to finish it before I have to return it to the library. I do highly recommend the chapter entitled “The Montgomery Bus Boycott”, especially if, like me, your American history education is spotty. I had no idea that the bus boycott lasted more than a year after the arrest of Rosa Parks. It was really by the efforts of every black person in Montgomery to carpool or walk that the boycott worked. I can’t imagine what that must have been like. It was also during this time that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested for the first time (for going 30 in a 25 mph zone), his house was bombed, and he really came into prominence as a leader in the civil rights movement. I have gotten bogged down later in the book among the descriptions of presidential politics and King’s financial issues with Alabama.


If your summer reading is going well, let us know what gems you have found.