This book is absolutely amazing!
Unfortunately, I had seen the movie first but that didn’t alter my opinion of the book what so ever. It was an excellent movie and the book is even better. I’m actually quite ashamed to say that I didn’t know this was a book until I had seen the movie. But, I’m glad I did.
This is the sort of novel that lets you escape your own troubles and enter Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, even if its only for a few hours.
This book is so well written that you just can not put it down! I managed to finish it in 2 days. It’s fast-paced (but not too fast that you can’t keep up), intriguing and very humourous, but you’re not left confused or over thinking certain situations because it’s all clearly written in front of you.
So, the story is set in 1962, Jackson, Mississippi (racial segregation period) and is about the life of the “help” and their relationships with the “white” folk. It’s told through both perspectives (maids and “maid-owners”) and is told by three main narrators: Aibeleen, Minny and Skeeter.
What I really loved about the book was how honest it was. The 1960’s was a very rough era in American for African-Americans and this is something that most people want to admit ever happened, yet it did. Kathryn Stockett.
I have to admit that I extremely hated Miss Hilly in this book as well as in the movie. She one of those characters that makes you wanna jump in the book and punch their faces just to get them to shut up. She was rude, obnoxious and racist. But without her, the book would not have been a entertaining. She’s a character you love to hate and given the history behind the novel, you kinda understand why she was like that.
Coming from New Zealand, all we really know about Black Civil Rights and the 1960 in America, has come out of history books at school or we’ve Googled it. (lol) So even though this is fiction, reading it helped my understanding of the era and 1960 America in general.
What I really loved about this book was that it shared both sides/perspectives. It wasn’t all based on “whites” perspectives. Stockett was able to show us how the maids felt about these changes and their opinions on everything, which is really cool. You had an insight to their lives as well and how completely different it was compared to the white folks. They had very basic homes, with the essentials and nothing else, where as the white folk and everything: beds for everyone, air conditioning etc. So you really understood how they struggled in everyday life.
This is definitely a book I would read again.
🙂
j.x
Book Review 