The Help: Review

Four peerless actors render an array of sharply defined black and white characters in the nascent years of the civil rights movement. They each handle a variety of Southern accents with aplomb and draw out the daily humiliation and pain the maids are subject to, as well as their abiding affection for their white charges. The actors handle the narration and dialogue so well that no character is ever stereotyped, the humor is always delightful, and the listener is led through the multilayered stories of maids and mistresses. The novel is a superb intertwining of personal and political history in Jackson, Miss., in the early 1960s, but this reading gives it a deeper and fuller power.

Wow, very deep and powerful book. I loved the way the character's voices flowed through my mind as I read. I felt their pains, their sorrows and their indignities. This book is something everyone should read, I hope it ends up as a mandatory study book in English classes everywhere.

That being said, I did feel a lacking in the description area. I longed for detailed and beautiful prose describing the rolling hills of cotton. I couldn't visualize the homes well or anything surrounding them, which is fine, I'm capable of imagining these things on my own, but I prefer reading beautiful writing.

Cover: 2/5
Plot: 5/5
Writing: 3/5
Overall: 3/5