SPOILER ALERT: I TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE ENDING. This book deserves its status as a best-seller. It tackles an important subject and provides insight into an era of the recent past, while simultaneously providing humor and drama that keep the pages turning rapidly. It is hard to see how a white writer can construct a novel purporting to show the experience of subjugated blacks in Jackson, Mississippi towards the close of the Jim Crow south without opening herself up to criticism, and Stockett is no exception. Many of her African-American maids are of the “saint” variety–one feels that their experiences are more realistically conveyed than their feelings or reactions–and SPOILER ALERT the pat, relatively happy ending risks understating the depth and persistence of the issues the book identifies. I would not use this book for a high school history class. On the other hand, a different tack on the portrayal of the maids would have been open to criticism as well, and the ending was the one I craved. Stockett herself had a life that largely paralleled the experiences of Skeeter, her white protagonist, and that allows her to present much of her material with a wonderful descriptiveness that captures a great deal of the time and place. She also tells a captivating story on an important subject. Movie sure to follow.
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