The Help

I had a day of traveling through airports and my sister Jane gave me the perfect traveling companion: The Help. It was a delightful blend of humor, history, very interesting and real characters, and poignant story. We're reading it in our book club, and I can't wait to hear what others thought of it. Two things I noticed...the author began and ended the book in the same house. I thought that was kind of cool, considering how the story spans several homes and years. The other thing I noticed is that it's a very feminine book. I know many women who have read it, but haven't heard of any man reading it. There is only one main male character, and we never learn what he's thinking. The story is told from three different women's point of view, and there is only one mail character that comes up much. So that was interesting...it describes a primarily woman's world from women's points of view.
When I really like a book a LOT, I tend to want to be in it til I'm done, despite what other things might be going on. I call this the addiction factor. I would rate this book as having an addiction factor of 9 on a 10-point scale. It's also a measure of the engagement of my brain in the story and this one was high. I also appreciated all of the wonderful philosophy and love and forgiveness that were shown by the characters. The courage was astounding. It was amazing to think, too, that all of this hatred and racism existed without question in Mississippi as recently as the 70's. I know it still exists, but this was very overt and violent without the benefit of protection of the law or system. Amazing...