The Help

This is my first post in a while. My running has been going good.

8/25 5 miles
8/27 7 miles
8/28 5 miles
8/29 10 miles
8/30 4 miles
8/31 7 miles
9/1 7 miles
9/2 5 miles
9/3 5 miles
9/5 20 miles
9/7 7.5 miles
9/8 5 miles
9/9 3.66 miles

I will discuss my running more in the next few days.

The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is my favorite book that I have read on a long time.

http://www.amazon.com/Help-Kathryn-Stockett/dp/0399155341/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252521545&sr=8-1

I listened to this book thru audible.com and think having different readers for the three main characters added a lot to the experience. Each of the main characters had distinctive personalities that the listener got to know, like and understand.

Abileen is the smart, motherly maid who cares a great deal for the white kids that she helped to raise. Clearly Abileen would have been an excellent teacher or writer if she did not grow up as a black in Mississippi before the civil rights movement. She is a mature, saintly women that is extremely well respected in the black community of Jackson.

Abileen's best friend is another maid, Minny Jackson, who is a great cook, but whose mouth gets her in trouble. Minny provides a lot of humor to the story with her dealings with her employer, Celia Foote and with the evil Hilly Holbrook. However, her problems with spousal abuse with her husband, Leroy were a very serious side of the book.

Skeeter Phelan is a recent college graduate who unlike, the other women her age is more concerned with her career as a writer than finding her husband. Skeeter is a modern women living in a town that is very backwards. She is probably my favorite fictional character that I can recall.

In addition to the main characters there are a number of minor characters who add a lot to the depth of the story.

-Mae Mobley is an innocent three year old that Abileen takes care of. Mae Mobley is closer to Abileen than she is to her mother. Abileen tries in small ways to do what she can so that Mae Mobley does not grow up to be racist.

-Mae Mobley's mother and Abileen's boss is Elizabeth Leefolt, who is far more weak than evil.

-Lou Ann Templeton is one of the young married women that is friends with Hilly and Elizabeth. Skeeter has no respect for Lou Ann but at the end of the story, finds that Lou Ann is far stronger and smarter than she thought. The impression at the end of the book is that Lou Ann will be involved in working to integrate Jackson going forward and will challenge Hilly Hillbrook.

- Skeeter's parents. Her father is a soft spoken, hard working farmer. Her mother is pushy and did not know what to make of Skeeter. Skeeter did not get along with her mother, but they got closer when her mother gets sick with cancer.

-Skeeter's maid growing up was Constantine, who left her family and Jackson while Skeeter was away at college. Skeeter spends a lot of time trying to find out what happened to Constantine. Constatine is part of flashbacks rather than the actual story.

-Elaine Stein works for a publisher in New York that agrees to publish the book on maids in Jackson that Skeeter and Abiline secretly write. Elaine is a role model for Skeeter.

The end of the book was a surprising way to finish a story especially for Abilene and Minny whose story seemingly was not finished, but after thinking about I decided that the book ended appropriately. Skeeter, with convincing from Abileen and Minny, accepts a job working in New York for the same publishing company where Elaine Stein works. Working on the book with the maid did cost Skeeter her relationship with her boyfriend, Stuart Whitworth who wanted to marry her until finding out about it. For Minny, the book concludes with her leaving Leroy after he hits her while she is pregnant. The story ends for Abileen with Hilly forcing Elizabeth to fire Abileene for taking silver that they all know Abileen did not take. Abileen does not know what she will do next. The ending shows that while progress was made, there is still along way to go and there will still be struggles.

I give The Help an A+.