Run – Don’t Walk – to Buy “The Help” (but only if you like to lose yourself in a GREAT book …)
In a way I haven’t experienced since staying up ’til 4AM reading Ghost Soldiers in a hotel bathroom (so as to not inconvenience my co-instructor and hotel roommate way back when I was still on staff with Peacemaker Ministries and we were teaching at an Advanced Training Practicum) … I cannot put this book down!
The characters are absolutely FASCINATING. None of that annoying, stock-character, try to get us to believe a person is boring by using the word “boring” to describe them, horribly-written way. I not only feel like I can actually SEE and KNOW these people—I want to know them MORE. I wish I could chat with them in real life. I feel like I AM chatting with them in real life.
The story line? STUNNINGLY ENGAGING. Just like Ghost Soldiers—just enough build; just enough resolution; just enough “keep me on the edge of my seat oh my STARS what is going to happen-ness” that I don’t want to stop reading. Ever.
The TRUTH behind the fiction? Heart-breaking. Accurate. I keep thinking, “This is going to be an excellent book to read with Sophia and Eleanor one day because it’s one thing to listen to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to read writings, to talk and discuss in the abstract. This book TAKES you into this period of our country’s history that I do NOT want to romanticize or mis-characterize. I don’t. This is a hugely awful truth of our country’s history, yet heroes did abound, and I want to do my best to help my daughters to have an appropriate understanding of it, inasmuch as that is possible for three white women living in Montana.
OH! And this book is SO OVER-THE-TOP-ENJOYABLE-TO-READ that I simply can’t figure out how to tell you how great it is so far. Well, maybe this will illustrate my point … So well written. Such a SPOT-ON turn of phrase. Such good use of words, timing, humor, pathos. That I am starting not only to underline (A NOVEL! I do this for theology/substance of course, but a NOVEL? YUP!) … but I am rewriting entire sections in the back of the book simply so I can read and re-read the lines because they are so (delightful. painful. convicting. beautifully, perfectly phrased. cringe-inducing. insightful.) perfectly crafted. worthy of reading again and again.
So I guess that’s pretty much my strong encouragement that:
– If you love to read, but you haven’t really “lost” yourself in a great book for a LONG time;
– If most modern fiction makes you pretty much gag because of its inanity and formulaity;
– If you strive to love the good and hate evil and you know that living life in this fallen world is neither easy nor “clean” …
Run, don’t walk, to get yourself a copy of The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
It’s totally worth it. I’m lovin’ it. And I think you might too.
Don’t forget—if you actually BUY from Amazon by clicking on the link, I think I get like $.03 or something. (I really have no idea what the actual amount it—but every quarter or so, Amazon puts a few dollars in my bank account, so be aware of that, you know, just in the interest of full disclosure.)
But maybe you could go to a REAL store and smell REAL coffee like me and get it there instead?
Whatever the case—if you’d like to enjoy a good book, I recommend this one. HEARTILY.
And with that, I’m going back to my book. 🙂
Happy Saturday to you!
Your friend,
Tara B.