Monday, August 2, 2010

Book: The Help

Recommended by Coworkers & family friend
Read last night and today
Loved it!!

This is another piece of evidence that well written material with amazing endings are my favorite kind of book!

Skeeter, a young white college-educated girl comes home to Mississippi not sure what to do with her life. Her family still has a large plantation, and her mama wants her to get married. She is part of all the right social circles and has polite little parties with her friends.
Those nice friends, fun bridge clubs, and her parent's plantation all have 'the help' doing most of their work. Maids in the house cooking, cleaning, and raising children while the men pick the cotton, beat their wives, or get hurt in the south's version of 'civil rights'.

Somehow this one white women and several black maids begin to open up to each other and Skeeter is in the process of write a tell all with the help of the maids about each and every one of their white 'families'. Some of the stories are amazing, disgusting, depressing, and just plain curious.

Everything works so well in spite of itself, it's like watching a perfectly choreographed ballet. Everything doesn't always turn out well, but it sure can get interesting!