Help...Just finished reading this book

Just finished reading, Help by Kathryn Stockett.
I was given the book by a friend and told, "you will like it".  Yeap, I really really liked it. I loved the characters. Set in the 1960's of Jackson Mississippi.

The author Kathryn Stockett has written her first novel and she can be very proud. She wrote what was familiar to her and introduced us to little pieces of ourselves in the wonderful people of Jackson. I fell in love with storyline in the first two pages and knew I was going to stay up late and finish this book. I found myself giggling and cheering them on as these brave women decide to tell a story that only gets told in whispers after the white lady goes out for the afternoon. I found that I was just as nervous as the characters where when "their book" was published. I kept thinking, "look how much more of the book I have to finish; what more can happen?"  But you have to read the best part...that is the next page, and the next and the next...


Some readers may have moments of "I remember that" and "I know where I was when.."; as she tells her story in a timeline dotted with real history markers like President Kennedy's assassination and  the march on Washington with Martin Luether King Jr.  Reading Help made me a bit uncomfortable to be white. Reality sets in when you  identify the embarrassment of unimaginable huge heapings of ignorance that we believed, swallowed and asked for another helping.

Kathryn writes a description of her own real life of growing up with a maid and there is one line I truly prize:
"Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought. "

I loved when Aibileen is teaching the baby with presents wrapped in brown grocery bag paper and white butcher paper. When baby Mae unwraps these gifts, she sees, "we is the same under the wrapping". 
The last thing I want to say is I love the delicious writing  in this book because the dialect used when the colored women speak betwix deem selves. It brings a body right to the kitchen table wif a a bowl of ham and beans set front of you. You can't help but jest eat up the whole bowl an den lick the bowl clean too. Sure nuff.

I wasn't paid for this... I just really liked the book.  This is Girl Schmuck signing off.