I had heard so many good things about this book that I asked for it as a Christmas gift. As I always have a list of books I’m working through, it took me a while to get to this one and I was frankly disappointed. I haven’t had to suspend so much disbelief since the last episode of Lost! The author could have told a simple, nuanced story of racism and injustice toward black maids who served the white families of Southern families during the the Civil Rights era. Instead she pulls the stops out and crams into the novel an ever expanding litany of horror, until the tally begins to defy belief. All the white mothers were unloving and mean-spirited. “The League,” a small group of socially connected white women are so powerful that they totally dominated this CITY of 150,000 people, to the point that a black maid can never find a job in the region ever again, should Miss Hilly put the word out. That is totally unbelievable! Maybe this could happen in a small town, but the largest city in the state of Mississippi?
This could have been a beautiful book, where the author used a small story to illustrate a great wrong. Instead the author creates an antagonist in Hilly who is so over-the-top that by the end I expecting her head to turn around backwards and spit out pea soup. Perhaps if my expectations had not been so high, I would not have been so disappointed. This novel is okay if you like the type of overblown American novel where every example of injustice has to be larded on until the it defies one’s credulity. If you want to read a wonderful novel about injustice and racism during the Civil Rights era, read To Kill a Mockingbird. This is an insightful, beautifully written and lovingly nuanced novel. I would not recommend The Help.
3 button pin printed