"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

This novel was loaned to me by my friend Mary B. The story takes place in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. With chapters alternating between the points of view of Aibileen, Skeeter and Minnie, it tells the story of how a young upper class white aspiring journalist and two black maids clandestinely collaborate on a book about the experiences of black women working for white families in the city. The novel is completely recounted in the first person and I had a hard time getting into it at first because the first two chapters are told by Aibileen, an aging black maid, and employ the vernacular appropriate to the time-frame and her station (or at least attempts to do so, I'm not qualified to judge) which I found jarring and not very pleasant to attempt to decipher. I think I set the book aside before finishing this initial section and didn't pick it up again for weeks, if not months. When I finally did, read a little farther, figured out that not all of the book was narrated in the same voice, and also got more used to Aibileen's voice, I quite enjoyed the story. I can't say I found anything transcendent about the prose style, but the story was enjoyable. And it basically ends well, which is more than can be said for a lot of contemporary real-life events one reads about.