Book Review: The Help

My apologies for my absence here. Not writing for three months certainly isn't the way to build up blog traffic. As usual when I've not been around these parts for a while, it's because I've been busy writing elsewhere. Visit here to see fruit of my time spent not blogging: My Byline Online.

Writers are often encouraged to write every day, and I sometimes find myself lamenting my inability to do that. Until I realize that I really do write every day. Or nearly. Between my non-stop paid writing assignments, my own I-still-write-it-by-hand journal, emails, my monthly writing group (where I get to do my just-for-fun writing-as-play), and that book proposal I was working on, I write often. So often that as I've become more established as a freelancer my time for blogging has dwindled. Life is a series of exchanges, I suppose. One can never do everything at once. And in this season I'm thankful for work that I love and that grows me as a writer and person.

That said, I've managed enough bits of time away from work this month to read the very delightful The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Over Easter weekend, I decided to give myself a very big treat: I could walk into Borders and buy a book, any book that caught my eye. Typically there's some level of planning around my book purchases. So walking into a bookstore with such freedom is like being a kid in a candy store, as they say, with a $5 dollar bill to spend. In other words, it was heaven. Or was supposed to be. For some reason the tables of books that usually leave me drooling and reconsidering my choice of a low-paying profession that limits my purchases held few drool-worthy options that night. But I picked my way through, hopeful of finding a book that would make my treat to myself a real treat. Time was ticking, as they'd made the announcement that the store was closing in 15 minutes and I still hadn't closed in on a selection.

At the last minute, I committed to The Help. Mostly I wanted a good read that wasn't silly, the kind that's worth losing sleep in order to read, thoughtful but not so thick as to feel like heavy work. I wanted a piece of fiction quality enough that I'd be glad to add it to my library rather than wishing I'd saved the dough and checked it out from the library.  

The Help completely fit the bill. It's an enjoyable, interesting, well-written read. I'm from the South but more from the '80s backwoods, mountain south. Not from the moneyed, deep south, though I've encountered more of that South since I arrived in Nashville. So this book about relationships between black maids and their white employers in 1960s Civil Rights era Jackson, Mississippi, was a glimpse into a culture I've grazed against but never lived in. The characters Stockett has created are complex enough to stay interesting throughout as are the relationships between them. While I've read some critiques of the dialects she gave some of her characters, I found them comforting because I've known people who really talk that way. And while I never wanted to acquire the accent and grammar of the place I was raised in, there's a part of me that hears home in those grammatically-incorrect strings of words and sounds.

So there you go. A review in a flash. Get the book. Read it. Add it to your library. Or borrow it from the public one.