‘The Help’ by Kathryn Stockett

I enjoyed this a lot. It is a serious work of popular fiction that explores important issues and portrays a time and place through the lives of well-drawn characters who the reader can't help but care about.

It was Kathryn Stockett’s first novel. It was published in 2009, spent over 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, sold over seven million copies and was turned into a very successful, multi-award winning film (which I have not seen but will do).

The novel is set in the town of Jackson, Mississippi between 1962 and 1964 when the civil rights movement was advancing apace along with everything else in society and during which, of course, the great John F Kennedy was president prior to his assassination.

At this time an apartheid-style racial segregation in states like Mississippi was the defining feature of society. Jim Crow laws were still in place mandating separate schools, libraries, cinemas, hospitals, buses and even toilets for white and ‘colored’ people. They lived in separate areas and were, of course, also divided massively in terms of relative economic opportunity and political power. All this obscenity is portrayed very fully and effectively in the book, and when reading it you continually have to remind yourself just how recently this very real institutionalised racism was seen as ‘normal’ and entirely acceptable in large parts of America.

The story is focused on the lives of the black maids who work in the houses of the wealthier white families, and particularly on the role they play bringing up young children so much more privileged than their own.

The cast is almost entirely female. There is just one major white character in the form of the splendidly named Eugenia Phelan, a young would-be journalist nicknamed 'Skeeter' who works alongside the other two major narrators – Aibeleen Clark and Minny Jackson – in writing a memoir of the lives of the ‘helps’ that ultimately gets published and gives the story its main narrative arc.

There are also numerous sub-plots including a kind of romance involving Skeeter, the disappearance of the black 'help' who brought her up as a kid and a society of white ladies who get involved in various charitable activities while actively acting in an outrageously racist fashion in their own lives.

This is something of an epic in its scope – extending over some 500 pages – but it is a completely compelling, morally clear, character-driven story that is hard to put down once you get into it. The witty and authentic dialogue is just wonderful to read.

It is probably a good choice for reading groups, in particular, because there is a lot to discuss. Kathryn Stockett is herself a white woman from a reasonably privileged background who comes from Jackson in Mississippi. She was as a toddler brought up by a black maid who worked in her parents’ house. So the novel is very much born from personal knowledge and understanding.

I believe that those concerned about ‘cultural appropriation’ have been critical of the book, and the film, on the grounds that they in both cases white people are telling black people’s stories. I find this perspective to be absurd, largely on the grounds that it really denies the legitimacy or even the possibility of imaginative fiction involving authors drawing on and commenting on the lived experience of anyone who is not of the same race, gender, sexuality etc etc of the characters they create. This is just nonsensical, particularly in a case like this when the impact on readers can be nothing other than completely positive and constructive. Millions have read this book and millions more have seen the film, all being informed and touched in the process.

A first rate, highly engaging read.