Publisher: Penguin
Author: Kathryn Stockett
There are times when you feel like thanking the movie for leading you to the book. One fine day I found myself watching the movie, The Help on television. I was impressed, it was a very well made movie, very engrossing. Much later, a week or so ago to be exact, I came across the book. My daughter had picked it up from the library and it was lying around.
Like the movie, the book just drew me in. The major players are a handful of women, Skeeter, Hilly, Elizabeth, Aibileen, Minny and Celia. Yet they recreate a mini world where the voices of thousands of white and black women resound. The period it is set in, 1963-64 is exciting and when things are on a very important cusp of change. On the one hand there are conservatives who want things to remain as they are and then there are those who are impatient to move forward.
Skeeter is a fresh graduate with a college degree. She wants to live in New York and work for a magazine. On an impulse, she applies for a job with a publishing firm. She finds an unexpected but a tough mentor when Elaine Steen replies to her application with some sage advice. Skeeter is asked to look for a job at the local paper and find something big to write about if she wants to be published. Skeeter starts thinking about something exciting to write about and gets a job at the local paper writing housekeeping tips. The irony is, Skeeter has never done a day of housework and is not qualified for writing about housekeeping. So she starts taking help with the tips from Aibileen, who is the help of her childhood friend Elizabeth.
In the upper cream of society, the well born women, Hilly is the undisputed leader. She runs the league, she calls the shots on who is in and who is out. Like lemmings, the other women follow suit. Hilly does not use her position wisely, she is mean and a bully. If you cross Hilly, you might as well leave Jackson. Skeeter finds herself heading for a face off with Hilly. It could break her and turn her into a pariah in Jackson.
Skeeter finds the big idea she wants to write about, the plight of black maids in Jackson. It would be in the form of a series of interviews. Skeeter enlists Aibileen for the job. If the word got out that they are writing about this, they could face death.
The hardest part of the job is to find at least five or six other maids who would be willing to help them. No one is willing to help them. Minny is Aibileen's loudmouth friend. She is forever getting into trouble because of her short temper. Minny is wholly against the idea of the book, but agrees to share her stories reluctantly. Minny has done something unthinkable with Hilly and is apprehensive.
Skeeter cannot blame the black women for not wanting to get involved with her book, but she knows it will not work unless she gets some more women willing to share their heartbreaking stories. Will she be able to complete her book at all? Will it be good enough for publication? I knew what was about to happen, yet I was turning pages, eager to find out more.
This is Kathryn Stockett's debut novel and boy, what a novel. Such sparkling characters, fleshed so beautifully, Hilly, Skeeter, Elizabeth, Aibileen, Minny. Their deeds and misdeeds have us flipping pages. I had seen the movie and knew what was coming, yet I was eagerly turning pages to find out more. Frankly, the movie had such good actors that I had no trouble at all visualising the characters.
Most of all, I loved the way the era is brought to life in the book. The slower life, the heavy dependence on 'society' for entertainment. The way TV is beginning to dominate lives, the slow onslaught of new ideas, the events. Kennedy's death, Man in space, the advent of television remote, air conditioning, women wearing frocks with shorter hemlines, the hair. This charming world has dangerous undercurrents when a black man can easily be disposed of. But even that is gradually changing.
This is a novel about women and men are a little too absent from it. There is Leroy, the abusive husband of Minny. There is William, Hilly's husband. Skeeter's father gets a bit of footage. The one most in evidence is Stuart, Skeeter's boyfriend. Skeeter knows his faults, but is overcome by her need to have a man in her life. It is a very real situation. Not that you really miss the men, you know.
Hilly is a little too much in control, I felt. Surely there were many older women who were around who would not have put up with her bullying. However, we can take Hilly, Elizabeth and Skeeter as the three types; Hilly is bossy and very conservative, Elizabeth is helpless and too much of a follower, Skeeter is the forward thinker and an agent of change.
The movie is more or less faithful to the book. It has shortened some parts, the labour, the time, the fear and secrecy in which Skeeter's book is written. It has added some very valuable parts about Skeeter's mother and the story behind the sacking of their Help, Constantine. The movie version of it was much better. I felt the book did not bring out the tragedy of Constantine well enough. After all, it is Skeeter's bond with Constantine that spurs her on to find out more about other black maids.
I will end with a lovely quote from the book.
Truth. It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky hot body. Cooling a heat that's been burning me up my whole life. Truth, I say inside me head again, just for that feeling.
No comments:
Post a Comment