Reading “The Help”

Wow! What a fantastic first novel from Kathryn Stockett. It is said that you should write about what you know and it seems she did. Stockett was raised in Mississippi with a black family maid who told her stories about picking cotton as a child. She really nailed the voices of the women in her story, written primarily about two black maids and one young white woman who is appalled at the way the help is treated in their community in 1962.

Miss Eugenia Phelan, nicknamed Skeeter at birth by her brother, graduated from Ole Miss with a diploma and ambition when all of her girlfriends were getting engaged and married. While away at college, her beloved maid, Constantine, disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter what happened or where she’s gone. This mystery is a thread that runs through the entire book, entangled with her desire to improve relations between white women and their hired help. Skeeter wanted to be a writer and applied for a position as an editor with Harper & Row Publishers in New York. The response she receives from the senior editor sets in motion the clandestine project she is writing with the help in town, telling the good and the bad about the white families they work for. This was a very dangerous project for all involved during this time of prejudice and racial unrest in Mississippi.

Aibileen is the first maid to come on board with the tell-all project that Skeeter proposes. They originally connected when Skeeter took a job at the local newspaper, writing a column on keeping a clean house. Readers would write in with cleaning questions and Skeeter would answer them. The catch was that she knew next to nothing about cleaning and asked Aibileen for help. Aibileen had worked for many white families over the years and was currently helping to raise her 17th white baby while cooking and cleaning.

An excerpt by Aibileen:

“After while my mind done drifted to where I wish it wouldn’t. I reckon I know pretty well what would happen if the white ladies found out we was writing about them, telling the truth a what they really like. Womens, they ain’t like men. A woman ain’t gone beat you with a stick. Miss Hilly wouldn’t pull no pistol on me. Miss Leefolt wouldn’t come burn my house down.

No, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches’ fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em.

First thing a white lady gone do is fire you.”

Minny also agrees to tell her story to Skeeter, although very begrudgingly. She is a sassy woman who has lost several jobs for speaking her mind to her employer. Minny is the bouncing red ball in this book — you have to keep your eye on her all the time and just try to keep up with the highs and lows of her life. When the project is floundering, Minny is the catalyst that pushes it into high gear while at the same time providing a safety net to the vulnerable maids in the community.

As the story progresses, the tension becomes greater and greater. This was one of those “just one more chapter” books that I couldn’t put down because I simply had to find out what happened next. My mind stayed on these women and their stories even when I wasn’t reading. So well done!

“The Help” is our book club’s pick for January — was a great choice! Visit Stockett’s website at http://kathrynstockett.com/

Reading “American Wife”

Recently finished this fabulous book by author Curtis Sittenfeld. Now I’m eager to read her others.

“American Wife” is a novel that runs from 1954 through 2007, about a lovely woman named Alice Lindgren. She is from a quintessential middle-American family, an only child raised by a banker and housewife in Wisconsin. The boy she believes would have been the great love of her life is killed in a bizarre accident during their high school years and she dreams of him throughout her life.

Alice is a solid woman, strong in her convictions, happy in her work as a librarian. Her best friend, Dena, grew up in the house across the street from her and they remain friends into their 30s. Then she meets Charlie Blackwell at a barbeque and her life takes a new direction.

The Blackwells are a wealthy, country club family that made their fortune selling meat products. Charlie’s father, Harold, the patriarch of the family, had also served as Wisconsin’s governor and the family is vocal in their Republican political beliefs. Although Alice is a Democrat, she and Charlie marry and they eventually end up in the White House.

This book is a good, long read at 555 pages, the type of saga that covers a gamut of issues from race to gay relationships to the very public visibility of political families. Here is an excerpt from the book, a thought by Alice that I thought summed it up quite well:

I have felt strongly since Charlie entered public office that my foremost duty is to take care of him, to be the one person he sees on a daily basis who’s not paid to agree or disagree with him, who really is just a friend. Is it startling, then, that I wasn’t altogether displeased by an event that would draw attention to my disagreement with his stance on a particular issue without my being the one who’d revealed our conflicting views?

curtis sittenfeld

I love that this young author won the Seventeen magazine fiction writing contest in 1992, at age sixteen. Her work has been published in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, Salon and Glamour, and featured on public radio’s This American Life.

Visit her website at http://www.curtissittenfeld.com/

Reading “When Crickets Cry”

So it seems the book club I’ve joined is not too serious. Out of 6 of us, only 2 actually read the entire book for this month, 1 had just about finished it and the other 3 didn’t even start it. But we drank 3 excellent bottles of wine (my favorite was Vampire Pinot Noir) and still managed to have a very nice discussion about it using questions from a reading group guide.

November’s selection, “When Crickets Cry” by Charles Martin, was sent to me for my birthday a few years ago by my middle sister. I absolutely loved it when I read it then and so suggested it as a good read. Couldn’t wait to read it again and it was just as good as I remembered it.

This story is about Reese, a man who is hiding from tragic events that occurred a few years earlier. He has remade himself with a carefully crafted but comfortable life and has a few close relationships, mainly his endearing brother-in-law, Charlie. The day he meets 7-year-old Annie, selling lemonade to raise money to help cover her medical bills and pay for a heart transplant, the new existence he’s created begins to slide out of his control.

charles martin

This book is just plain beautiful. Charles Martin always seems to include water in his books and this one is no exception. Set on the Tallulah River and Lake Burton in Georgia, Reese and Charlie refurbish boats and row together in the early morning hours. Martin’s words are so descriptive, you can smell and taste and envision the places and people he writes about. This story is full of medical jargon and some pretty exciting scenes revolving around transplants.

Published in 2006 with 336 pages, a website for a Reading Group Guide is also given that makes this especially good for book clubs. I would give this book 5 stars out of 5 and plan to re-read it many times over. Visit his website at http://charlesmartinbooks.com/

Reading “Speak”

This book nearly leaves me speechless. It brought back to me all the tough parts of high school — anxiety, awkwardness, the yearning to fit in. My high school years were a long time ago so I can’t even imagine how much tougher it’s become on today’s kids.

Melinda is entering her freshman year of high school after calling the cops a few months before, breaking up an end-of-year party. So, of course, everyone is mad at her. All of her friends have abandoned her. And, unfortunately, she can’t bring herself to tell them all what really happened at the party and why she did it.

She finds that introverting and saying as little as possible is the only way to function. Even her family seems to be going through a foundering dysfunctional phase. Finding out what brought all this about and how she drags herself out of the downward spiral it causes makes this a fascinating read. With only 198 pages, it’s also a quick read.

laurie halse anderson

This is a first novel written by Laurie Halse Anderson in 1999. Check out her website at http://writerlady.com. It has won numerous honors and awards and is really an excellent book, especially if you have kids in the middle school/high school age group. Even if you don’t, wrap yourself in a blanket, make yourself a cup of something warm and settle in. It’s like visiting high school again without being afraid you’ll forget your locker combination.

And speaking of reading, I’ve finally joined a book club. Yay! I’ve wanted to do this for years and just recently was invited to join a small group of lovely ladies that I know from a charitable organization I’ve worked with.

They meet once a month, discuss a little reading and drink some wine. One of the members says it’s a wine club and we read a little. 🙂 The first book I’ve read with the group is “The Lost Symbol,” Dan Brown’s latest and greatest. (Mom, I will send it to you eventually.) What a fun discussion. Especially when there are things like religion and politics involved. Woo hoo! Pour another glass of cabernet.