Book Opinion: The Help

Please note: my posts on what I think about books are merely reflections of my opinion. I don't fact-check because I am lazy, but I do my best to write accurately about what happens in a book; what I like about it, and what I don't. I also freely refer to plot points, so if you're afraid I will spoil something for you, don't read this until after you've read the book.

Before I begin, I know that there are people who love The Help.  I am not one of them. If reading rude things about this book will piss you off, I suggest you skip it. But if you want to read it and then tell me I'm wrong, by all means bring it.

Okay, here we go. Before I read The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, someone (I've forgotten who) told me it started off slow, but then really picked up. After reading it, I disagree, very much.

The Help starts off very strong. It gives a very good sense of place, and the characters start off well-rounded. It provides what good stories always provide—a peek behind the curtain to what's really going on. In this case, what the book does well is set the scene where one group of people (whites) exploit another group of people (blacks) in unreconstructed Jackson, Mississippi. How did black women who served as "the help" in white households deal with the day-in, day-out humiliations and privations against a backdrop where such things are institutionalized (and therefore, unlikely to change)? How did they keep themselves emotionally and spiritually afloat and intact? How did they do it logistically? On the other hand, how did the whites who employed these women live? What attitudes and habits made them view their station—as well their maids' station—as perfectly reasonable and acceptable? All this is, I think, fascinating and riveting to examine.

Unfortunately, The Help doesn’t go there. Where it takes us instead is into a potboiler that is ultimately unsatisfying and unbelieveable. I found my suspension of disbelief stretched way beyond the breaking point. The main character is a maid named Aibilene. She—along with her friend Minnie and (eventually) all their friends—contribute their life stories for a book on what it is like to be maids (the help). They tell their tales at great personal risk to themselves to a ding-a-ling white woman named Skeeter. The book is then published anonymously to great acclaim; the women contributors are happy, and Skeeter escapes her cancer-ridden mother (standing in, I think, for the South in general) to New York to begin a publishing career.

The reason I call this a potboiler is because there are too many plot points that are simply too much. For example, once the book is published, Aibilene feels that it's a "real shame" that Skeeter couldn't put her name to the book and get the adulation she deserves. Umm, Aibilene and all the other women who provided the content did so at risk to their lives. For Skeeter to have put her name to the book would have exposed them all. I have a difficult time seeing how on earth Aibilene would find it within herself to "feel bad" that Skeeter doesn't get her due. Especially since Skeeter, as a white woman, has benefited from the inequality the women talk about and has, in fact, risked only becoming an outcast (which she already is by the time the book is published, because—oh, forget it—too much to get into). In other words, Skeeter had very little risk. Besides, Skeeter didn't even do anything but take notes, leave them where the Evil Woman character could find them, and then send them in for publishing. Aibilene is clearly a good egg, but come on, dude, I'm not buying it that she would feel bad that Skeeter isn't known as the "author."

Also, the Evil Woman character is just way too evil. Wanting Minnie to be her maid, Evil Woman spreads a story around town that Minnie steals so no one else will hire her, then she tells Minnie she'll get paid even less than most maids get paid, and if Minnie doesn't like it, she can suck it. Did I mention that Evil Woman bullies her white friends? And that her husband is afraid of her? Oh, and that she's a little heavy? I really didn't appreciate that the fact Evil Woman is heavy is mentioned every time she enters the scene—done in a way to showcase, of course, her lack of character.

As for the flabbergasting plot point that in order to get Evil Woman back, Minnie bakes a cake with her own feces in it and serves it up to the Evil Woman—who eats it unknowingly—don't even get me started. That this gets further integrated into the plot point where the anecdote is included in the book so Evil Woman will never "out" the contributors or else her literally eating Minnie's shit would be known…well, let's just say it makes my eyes roll back so far inside my head as to put them in danger of ever being retrieved again.

So, there you go. This book really provoked me (in case you can't tell), perhaps because it started out so strong, but then it meandered into baloney.

In my humble opinion, of course.