THE HELP

• by Kathryn Stockett
• [rated by PBS readers as #16]
• 522 pages

Well, in keeping with the surprising theme throughout this little journey, this book, The Help, a tome I had read previously mind you, stopped me cold.

When I first read it, quite a while ago, I vaguely remember really liking it. The varied viewpoints felt fresh and the attack on the subject matter felt unique and approachable.

But not this time.

I don’t know if it is the increase in woke-ness that changed its effect on me this time. But it if caused my sensitivity to these theme to spike, then I’m grateful to it. Reading a 500-page novel about white people being prejudiced, unaware and unfeeling and black people paying with their lives, their hearts, their children and their dignity is no longer sad. It is intolerable.

So walking into that world became something that I quietly just could not face. Weeks went by, months. It was a good thing that I was ahead in books read because

I sat on this long enough to hatch it!

The last third of the story gives you heroes and change in the air and bad people getting their comeuppance. So you know that was easier going on the reading end. By the end of the book, there was great parity in struggles all around.

I particularly liked the relationship between Skeeter and her mom. Though her mom committed some horrible acts that affected Skeeter’s life drastically, she is dying and that brings up the other side of their relationship, that of love and interdependence. Refreshing to see a complex relationship in the middle of what seemed, for two thirds of the book, to be a battle between the good guys and the bad guys.

I would have recommended this to anyone after the first time I read it. I didn’t love it but I admired it. And now? The writing still works but the lives depicted are quite hard to endure.

I’m glad I had another look at it, though. But mostly, I’m glad I’m done with it!