Finally, a book worth reading in one day!
Yesterday, I devoured The Help by Kathryn Stockett in a twelve hour time period. I read while the kids had a rest time---it was a long rest time yesterday, they both slept. Good thing, because I wanted to read. Then I read while the two-year-old read Where's Waldo after he got up from his nap. Then I read again when the kids went to bed.
What a great day. What a great book. Great writing, great characters, great plot. Humor. Life. Strong women. Sassy dialogue. Complex, struggling, real characters. All the things that keep me reading. The setting is Mississippi in the 1960's. The book is about the black women who serve in the white households and raise the white kids. About about the women who employ them.
Stockett is good. Her non-fiction research (and experience) makes for some mighty fine fiction.
I think you'll like it. The tone reminds me of the Secret Life of Bees, but I think this is much better.
If I had to point out a downside to this book, it would be that after reading about these women who worked so hard to keep these houses (and kids) clean, my bathroom looked shamefully neglected. So today I yielded my oh-so-pregnant body around my bathrooms and gave the toilets and the floor a mighty scrubbing. They look a lot better. Aibileen (one of the characters) would be so proud.
But that's the only bad thing about this book. It might make you think about cleaning your bathroom. That's not a bad downside, really . . . and while you clean, you can mentally chew on the book's plot. So, yes, you may want to clean your bathroom, but you'll also have something else to think about.
And truth be told, the "Deborah Wants to Scrub Everything" is probably just pre-birth nesting. Probably didn't have anything to do with the book.
Probably.
