"The Help"

Just a little while ago, I finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I discovered this book in an "O" magazine article and the premise of the story prompted me to immediately go to Half.com and order a copy. 1960's Mississippi.... the housewives are white, the help are black... their lives are desperately entwined, but decidedly separate. I grew up reading To Kill a Mockingbird over and over, and I'm still re-reading that book to this day. I knew The Help would need to sit on my own bookshelves.

What I didn't know was that I would be reading chapter after chapter as fast as I could... and then having to put the book down some so I could think about the characters and their lives. I could have finished this book two days ago, but I slowed myself down... reading two or three chapters and then leaving the book on a table and walking away from it. This morning, I could have gotten to the last page of that book right after breakfast. I made myself read some, then walk away, read some more, walk away. An hour ago, I read the last page, the last sentence. Then I read every word of the author's acknowledgements. There isn't one sentence, one word, one letter that my eye did not find from the front cover to the back.

The book is now sitting its place on the bookshelf that holds my collection of modern fiction. I was tempted to shelve it with my non-fiction volumes, but that would be so un-librarian of me. During this book's chapters, I see-sawed between crying for the help, and wanting to shake the shoulders of the housewives. Not for their ignorance, but for their acceptance.

Their acceptance of the way things were done, without even thinking that those things could -- and should -- be different.

I will read this book again. And just like Mockingbird, it will haunt me for days and weeks and months, begging me to read it again.