A masterful first novel, is how describe The Help . The reader is plunged into the Mississippi of the 1960s. Full birth of the movement for civil rights, Jackson is still living in segregation, pure and hard.
three narrators: two good black and a young white woman, who watch all three of the small world around them. The daily maids, white women who are serving, and a world that separates them from each other. The rules, known and unspoken, that govern the interactions of these two ends of society. And the southern United States, hot and moist, where almost nothing happens, and yet where all about to change. The tension between the two sections of the population is about to explode.
Aibileen is a good support for the education of young white children whose mothers are too busy with their afternoon bridge club to deal with it. She tries to survive the tragedy of the death of his son, turning his love of the little girl in her care. Devoted body and soul to the children seventeen children she raised, Aibileen recounts with disarming simplicity a daily fact of fried chicken, education, cleanliness and tolerance, and all small and large injustices they experience, day after day.
His best friend and confidante is Minnie, the good whose outspokenness made him lose all his places of home. It elevates somehow her five children, and tries to keep her alcoholic husband on the right path. Always willing to speak her mind, often risking his life and his salary. And always ready to cheer for Aibileen.
Skeeter Phelan, she observes the good company of Jackson, to which it belongs, with an eye more and more critical. The sudden departure of Constantine, the black has good high, is surrounded by a mystery that everyone refuses to explain. She tries somehow discover the truth that his mother insists on concealing and thus it will gradually open their eyes to the fate that is reserved for the servants around her.
An unlikely friendship develops between dangerous and terribly these three narrators, three voices touching, honest and funny. But how to change a society that fenced to resist any change? While Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks launched a relentless movement, Mississippi remains as it is, as it always has been.
Dear fans of chick lit, this book is simply overwhelming. The reader feels immediately that despite the small events that describe daily life, it is brewing in Jackson things much more important, fundamental even. And it is impossible to believe that this is a first novel, the tone is just as subtle, sharp and cruel. The Help is a novel as we read little, vital.
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