The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I love reading a book that I'm sorry to finish.  Usually books that fall into that category are the classics, like a good Jane Austen or Charles Dickens.  In fact, it used to be that I didn't trust modern writers to come up with anything half as good.  But I absolutely loved this book, in spite of its being a national bestseller (and it looks like they're making it into a movie).  It's just about perfect for a book club (luckily that's how I was introduced; I don't often read books unless they come highly recommended by people I trust!).

Set in Jackson, Mississippi, in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, surrounded by Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and all kinds of racial issues, this novel explores the lives of two types of women; the white women of "society" and the black "help" they employ.  Stockett unfolds the experiences of three strong women; Skeeter Phelan, a white girl raised on a plantation, and Aibileen and Minny, two maids to her white friends.

Kathryn Stockett writes this book from three different and distinct viewpoints, reminiscent of Barbara Kingsolver's style in The Poisonwood Bible.  I couldn't pinpoint one I looked forward to hearing from the most--each had a lovable personality and faults a-plenty.  Perhaps that's what makes this story was so real and human.

I must warn you that it does have some swearing; not every-other-word or anything, but enough to discourage me from ever hearing it on tape . . . and there is a chapter with a "flasher" (I don't know how to put it more delicately) that I thought could have been left out.  But I still think it's a beautiful story well worth reading.