The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

I am somewhat mystified by the extreme popularity of this book – the waiting list just grows, and I had to BUY it to read for my book club (I’ve donated my copy, so it will serve a higher purpose…). It’s a well-written page-turner, but no more so than many other books of popular fiction. Although most have really liked the book, including those in my book club, I personally found it uncomfortable reading. The author seems patronizing throughout this tale of idle white women and their “colored help” during formative years of the Civil Rights Movement. She uses her version of “Negro” dialect of the 1960’s, with no corresponding “Southern White” dialect for her white characters. And her main character basically puts others at risk, largely for her own purposes, and then abandons them in the end. I have no personal experience with the uneasy close-yet-distant relationship between Southern whites and the African- American women they employed to work in their homes, often to raise their children, so perhaps am not the best judge of the author’s intentions. The history of this relationship is important, but it seemed to me that the author was working out her own complicated past. 451 pp.