Reviews for the novel
Links for various reviews of the novel
Review by Erin Aubry Kaplan for Ms. Magazine in 2009
Excerpt:
“The Help is buoyant in its most sober moments, occasionally insightful. Skeeter Phelan is a misfit, a 24-year-old college grad growing uneasy with the social hierarchies of home; the two black women who risk their lives and livelihoods to help collect the interviews she seeks, Aibileen and Minny, are sympathetically if somewhat predictably drawn. Yet the buoyancy often undermines the book’s more serious intentions; ultimately, The Help can’t decide if it’s modern Faulkner or pop lit with some racial lessons thrown in for fiber.”
http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=4544
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Review by Janet Maslin for the NYTimes in 2009
Excerpt:
“The trouble on the pages of Skeeter’s book is nothing compared with the trouble Ms. Stockett’s real book risks getting into. Here is a debut novel by a Southern-born white author who renders black maids’ voices in thick, dated dialect. (“Law have mercy,” one says, when asked to cooperate with the book project. “I reckon I’m on do it.”) It’s a story that purports to value the maids’ lives while subordinating them to Skeeter and her writing ambitions. And it celebrates noblesse oblige so readily that Skeeter’s act of daring earns her a gift from a local black church congregation. “This one, this is for the white lady,” the Reverend of that church says. “You tell her we love her, like she’s our own family.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/books/19masl.html
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Reviewer Jesse Kornbluth, Editor of HeadButler.com. Cross posted in the Huffington Post
Excerpt:
“Smartest of all, Stockett has downplayed the horror that was Mississippi in 1962. Back then, it wasn’t just Medgar Evans shot in the back outside his home, it was the leaders of state government defining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as ”Niggers, Alligators, Apes, Coons and Possums.” And more, and worse.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-kornbluth/is-the-help-more-than-a-s_b_333448.html
**Not to be picky, but the reviewer lists Medgar Evers as Medgar Evans, with the error still uncorrected after over a year, since the review was originally posted on 10/2009**
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Publisher’s Weekly Review
Excerpt:
“The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, while giving Skeeter the courage to break down her personal boundaries and pursue her dreams. Assured and layered, full of heart and history, this one has bestseller written all over it.”
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Review by Sybil Steinberg from The Washington Post’s Book World/washingtonpost.com
Excerpt:
“Aibileen and Minny share the narration with Skeeter, and one of Stockett’s accomplishments is reproducing African American vernacular and racy humor without resorting to stilted dialogue. She unsparingly delineates the conditions of black servitude a century after the Civil War.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/31/AR2009033103552.html
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Review by YaddaYadda for Newsvine.com
“On page four, Aibileen is talking about “congealed salad”, yet on page 84 when Aibileen is telling Miss Skeeter how to keep dogs from getting into a trash can, she tells her to use “pneumonia” instead of “ammonia”. Aibileen knows how to say “congealed”, yet is confounded by the pronunciation of “ammonia”? Please.”
http://monsterskin63.newsvine.com/_news/2010/01/25/3809001-book-review-the-help-by-kathryn-stockett
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Review by TopherGL for his blog It Was Uphill Both Ways.com
“There’s also been some complaint that Stockett works with a lot of stereotypes in her black characters. This may be true, but the white characters don’t come off looking any better or less stereotypical.”
http://www.itwasuphillbothways.com/2010/09/review-help-by-kathryn-stockett.html
** And yet again I have to interject. Are there any white characters with a venereal disease? aka spoilt cootchie? are there any white characters with an extremely large and loud family? Are there any white characters that steal and go to jail? Are their any white males called “no-account” or any of them absentee fathers? And do any of the white characters, even the white trash Celia talk as if English is their second language? I mean, are we even reading the same book here?**
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Review by Karen Valby for EW.com (Entertainment Weekly.com)
“If Skeeter is one to root for, the muscle and heart of the book belong to the maids Aibileen and Minny, tough, funny, vulnerable, conflicted women who know they are risking everything by sharing their stories with a skinny, naive white woman. Stockett jumps effortlessly between her women’s voices. She has created a world of memorable supporting characters — from the bitch in the Junior League to Skeeter’s oilman suitor — to surround them. When folks at your book club wonder what to read next month, go on and pitch this wholly satisfying novel with confidence. A– “
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20258471,00.html
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Review by BTSF from her site By Their Strange Fruit
“Stockett wrote in what she supposed were the words of black women, but if you really want to hear a black voice, empower a black voice to be heard. Support black artists that create wonderful works that will express exactly what the world is like for each individual, rather than trying to voyeuristically peer into what your imagination supposes it may be for a group.
The Help has rocked the charts, and yet there have been plenty of opportunities to read fiction and non-fiction on similar topics. Check out Octavia Butler or Maya Angelou, for starters. Then go to ‘White Readers Meet Black Authors‘ and immerse yourself in the rich options before you. Once you have read several of those, re-read The Help and decide whether it is still as ‘revolutionary’ as you once thought.
At the end of the day, with soring sales and an upcoming movie, Stockett is profiting very well from The Help. Thank goodness for all those Mississippi maids that made the story possible. I wonder where they are now.”
http://bytheirstrangefruit.blogspot.com/2011/07/help-review.html
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