Since book discussions for obvious reasons don’t tend to generate as many replies as movie/TV threads I’ll start with a short OP to see if there’s much interest before going into any lengthy dissections.
Has anybody else here read this book? It’s been on the bestseller lists since it came out and now it’s “soon to be a major motion picture” and the like (starring one of my favorite actresses, Octavia Spencer, as Minnie in what I hope will be her breakout role) though also with a couple of major miscastings imo (Skeeter being the biggest- or smallest actually- it was a major point in the book that she was 6’0 in her stockinged feet and they cast a 5’8 actress).
Generally I liked the book. I LOVED the afterword. My main problem was that I thought it was extremely unrealistic in that I just don’t think Skeeter would have gotten the positive reaction she got from The Help for her book (and I’d say more but I promised a spoiler free OP). More if others respond.
I voted other because you didn’t have “it was okay.”
Given the level of hype, I think my expectations were too high. It was entertaining, I kept turning the pages, but the characters were pretty one-dimensional and the ending was pat.
Apparently people who listened to it on audiobook liked it more than those who read it on paper – I read it on paper.
I listened to about 3/4 of it on audiobook on a long road trip and the rest I read. The audiobook WAS much better- I probably wouldn’t have liked it nearly as well if I had read it all. For one thing it was read by several different authors, all of whom acted their characters well and enacted the dialect realistically, some of which even being a lifelong southerner I couldn’t quite make out.
Without ever looking at a bio of her (though I have since) I could tell you from the first few pages that Kathryn Stockett was a rich white kid rather than a child of a black maid.
Least favorite aspects:
The shit-pie: I don’t know if that was supposed to be comic relief or what, but I thought it was a TERRIBLE plot device. Hilly would not only have fired her on the spot but she’d have probably had her jailed, and the notion that she wouldn’t do this because it would make her a laughingstock is ludicrous; she could cover up the details OR accuse Minnie of attempted poisoning OR have her locked in an insane asylum OR many other options.
I don’t pretend to be an expert in black culture or to know how all black women of that or any other time think or believe that all black women of that or any other time think alike, but I’d put every nickel I have or ever will have that there’s just no way in hell that many black maids would open up to a rich 22 year old white girl. NO-WAY-IN-HELL. They’ve got everything to lose and absolutely nothing to gain, and the best case scenario- the book is a huge success- means that it’s the rich spoiled white girl who grabs the gold ring. There’s also no way in hell Skeeter could keep going to the black section of town unnoticed by the white patricians, I don’t care where she parked or how discreet she was it’s going to get back to the white folks.
I also dislike the near absence of middle class characters. Believe it or not there was a black middle class in the south at this time- they didn’t all work as domestics- and the vast majority of white families DID NOT have full time black domestics. (My parents were teachers during this time- their income was probably pretty much dead average for the nation- and at their most flush they had a maid who came in once a week, and they briefly had a black babysitter come stay with me for a while [I won’t call her maid because she wasn’t paid or required to do much besides feeding me and saying “don’t do that” if I started to play with a loaded gun or whatever].) Stockett makes it seem as if the only facets of Jackson were rich white people and the blacks who worked for them.
Constantine- I thought that plotline was very unrealistic. It’s not absolutely impossible for a biracial person to give birth to a child who looks completely white, but it’s usually when they have a child with a white co-parent. Constantine is the daughter of a black mother and white father and she herself looks black- it specifically says she’s not even light skinned- and that her boyfriend was black- again, not light skinned- and their child was indistinguishable from a white child- that’s just insanely unlikely. I kept expecting to learn the father was Skeeter’s father or some other white man, but nope.
There used to be an urban legend when I was a kid about a white girl who marries a handsome olive skinned guy “from somewhere else” who claims to be Italian or Puerto Rican or whatever but who comes clean after she gives birth to a black baby. In some variants his mother comes for the baby and she’s “black as the ace of spades”. I’m guessing this UL predates most urban areas because it’s used in several stories, Kate Chopin’s Desiree’s Baby (1893) being perhaps the oldest (though with a couple of twists added in). Stockett seems to have taken this one and flipped it, but it’s very unlikely and would have been much more realistic/harmed nothing plotwise if Constantine’s child had been fathered by a white man.
I was one of those who heard it on audiobook and liked it. I feel certain that if I had read it in print I would have found it condescending and precious. But the talents of the performers elevated it. I don’t know anything about Emma Stone, the actress cast as Skeeter. I think Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis are fine choices. Who the hell is Jessica Chastain?
I liked it. My main problem - the good characters were SO GOOD and the bad characters were SO BAD.
I read it right when it came out, so the details are a little fuzzy but I remember being aggravated that the author implied the ring-stealing maid should have gotten some sort of free pass. It doesn’t matter how “evil” the evil lady was, stealing is not right, EVEN if the thief is a sainted mother just trying to get college tuition for her precious son. Not life in prison, but not scot-free either!
I thought the same thing- I might have not pressed charges if I liked the maid enough, but I’d definitely fire her without reference. The prison sentence was ridiculously draconian but the arrest and trial were completely justified.
She goes to lengths to show that unlike Mae Mobley’s mother Hilly is at least a loving and kind mother even if she’s cartoonishly mean to blacks and others she sees as underlings, but there’s no nuance to her at all beyond that. She’s just evil, so much so it’s hard to understand how Skeeter and others ever thought of her as a friend.
The character of Miss Celia- the weird white-trash woman who keeps her maid secret from her rich husband- was good but underdeveloped. You keep expecting for a really major reveal that never comes- the closest is her miscarriages but even that doesn’t explain everything. I kept picturing Jaime Pressly (from My Name is Earl) in the role.
