The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help is a novel that I first encountered as an audio book in Swedish and I listened to it driving to and from work. I really enjoyed the book then and I saw the film when that came as well. So now it was time to read it in its original language.

The Help is American novelist Kathryn Stockett's debut novel and it was first published in 2009. It was actually refused by a great number of literary agents before it was finally published.

The novel is set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. A time with segregation between races and just a couple of years before the Civil Rights Act was passed. The main characters are the maids Aibileen and Minny and the plantation owner's daughter Skeeter.

Aibileen is raising her seventeenth white child while trying to get over her own son's death. She is serene and wise and a bit older than the other two. When the children she raises start to understand the concept of black and white she generally leaves for another work. She is very good friends with Minnie who is famous around Jackson for her cooking and she is really proud of her own cooking but she has got a sassy mouth which gets her into trouble. She is married to Leroy and they have five children together. Skeeter is the daughter of a cotton plantation owner and she dreams of becoming a writer. She is tall and skinny and perhaps not the most beautiful of women and she finds dating a bit difficult. Her mother is trying hard to get her to do something about her hair and the way she dresses.

Horrified by her friend Hilly's way of  regarding the maids Skeeter comes up with the idea of writing a novel about the maids' situation, from the maids' point of view. Eventually Aibileen and then also Minny agree to telling their stories. But they need more stories if the book is going to be published and they need to be anonymous or they will risk their lives if it becomes known that they are the authors.

We get to follow these three women and their lives while they are working on the book and they all grow as humans,  finding the confidence to cross boundaries and during all this they find a friendship they never thought possible and they come to depend and rely upon one another.

I really like the story in this novel and I find it and the characters trustworthy. Stockett has been criticized for, among other things, spreading sterotypes but I still think that it is possible to get a picture of what life was like during this period in American history. Kathryn Stockett grew up in Jackson, Mississippi during the 70s and the family had a housekeeper so she is not totally unfamiliar with what she writes about.

So I would say that this novel is a good read and well worth reading even though it should not be considered as telling the absolute truth.