The Help (Author: Kathryn Stockett)

The Blurb from Penguin: 

The book that has taken the US and UK by storm. 

Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver... 

There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. 

Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell...

http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9780241950807/help

My Thoughts on The Help: 

So much has been written about this book already that whether I say “Oh, I loved this book” or “Phew, I am so glad I’ve finished that one”, it’s all been said before. 

Firstly, though, I have to say that I really wish I had not read the appendix, Too Little, Too Late, as that rather put me off the author. To me, her tone was like something from the days of “Gone With the Wind”, almost an exercise of self-mitigation, but really coming over as self-congratulation, as in, “Oh, look how enlightened I am”. I just didn’t buy it.  Sometimes it really is better if the author remains a totally unknown quantity. 

Anyway, back to the book. I felt that the ending seemed to come too soon, that it just simply dropped on the reader suddenly after what seemed to have been a very drawn out story. For me, after becoming so intimately acquainted with these southern belles and their put-upon “help”, it was as if Ms Skeeter was saying, “Wow, here we go, it’s a done deal; here’s your money; I’m off to the big smoke”. I realise that I am not expressing this very well, but for some reason this book doesn’t inspire me to make my thoughts more lucid than this. What is it about the book that is, for me at least, somehow really mentally messy? Perhaps it’s the thought of all the abuse that will be hurled at me for not becoming one of the adoring fans of The Help. 

Regarding the people who walk through the pages of Kathryn Stockett’s book, I wanted to care far more deeply about Aibileen and Minny than I did, but they struck me as being caricatures more than characters. Unfortunately, I felt that way about almost everyone peopling this book. Ms Skeeter just annoyed the hell out of me, and the idea of her traipsing in the dark through the ghetto area, swathed in dark clothing, at times even arriving in a Cadillac, was really quite silly. As for poor “white trash” Celia, I can’t help wondering how it is that the sort of person who would fall in love with her could have once been engaged to the ghastly Ms Hilly. That really jarred with me, and I could not accept it at all. As the book progressed, it occurred to me that there was a real problem with the male of the species in The Help. The white men are all portrayed as incredibly weak, while the black men are mostly drunken wife-beaters. Either way, they are no more than wallpaper in this work, and the sort of wall paper you would really rather paint over.  

Having said all this, there are some passages which I considered excellent, places where I thought, “Ah, this is a great bit of writing”, such as the portion where Minny, who is undoubtedly my favourite character, is speaking about being beaten by her husband and she says: 

   “How can I love a man who beats me raw? Why do I love a fool drinker? One time I asked him, ‘Why? Why are you hitting me?’

   “He leaned down and looked me right in the face, ‘If I didn’t hit you, Minny, who knows what you become.’     

   “I was trapped in the corner of the bedroom like a dog. He was beating me with his belt. It was the first time I’d ever really thought about it. Who knows what I could become, if Leroy would stop goddam hitting me.” 

I think that what I take away from this book is a feeling of the need to examine my own attitudes, to face up to the little prejudices which pop up regularly, even though I consider myself free from racism, and so therefore, while The Help is not a book which I consider a particularly good one, it was for me a worthwhile read.

Hamlet: A Novel (Author: John Marsden)

 The  Blurb from Penguin Books: 

Hamlet is bored and restless. His friend Horatio can't work him out-but who can? His father has just died, and his mother has already remarried. He seems damaged by the sudden changes in his life. Or maybe he was always a little damaged. Or maybe he wasn't.   

Then, on a still night, the ghost of Hamlet's father comes walking, his long silver hair blowing wildly . . .  

This wonderful book, by one of Australia's most loved and most read writers, takes Shakespeare's famous play and makes it into a moving and full-blooded novel. John Marsden follows the contours of the original but powerfully re-imagines its characters and story lines, rather as Shakespeare treated his sources. We are aware not only of the strength of Marsden's own writing but the sensitivity of his insight into Shakespeare. Hamlet, A Novel will be adored by adults whether young or old.

http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9781921351471/hamlet-novel

My thoughts on Hamlet: A Novel: 

As one of those uneducated people who have never actually read Shakespeare, other than some wonderful quotes, the odd “scene” acted out at school, or a glimpse at some of his beautiful poetry, I approached John Marsden’s Hamlet: A Novel full of anticipation, blissfully ignorant but waiting to be told just what was so rotten in the State of Denmark.  Oh, joy, Marsden has absolutely done it for me with this one: I feel that I want to go out now and read the Bard’s version myself. Isn’t that a great writer, one who can open doors to give you a glimpse of other undiscovered goodies. 

I am so glad that I purchased a copy of this book and didn’t just check it out from the library, because there are so many lines and passages which I have underscored, or highlighted, lines where I felt the writing to be particularly beautiful, or amusing, or just plain masterful, the sort of lines where you interrupt your partner, who is himself busy reading, to say, “Listen to this; isn’t this fantastic”.  A few are: 

“He was quickness and light, a shadow on the wall, an illusion, a dream, a fancy. He was a glimpse, nothing solid. How could she anchor her boat to a wave?”  

There we have Ophelia talking of Hamlet. “How could she anchor her boat to a wave?” Wow, indeed. 

Next, one of those amazing passages which I think is an amalgam of Shakespeare and Marsden: 

“Oh, to oneself, always to oneself. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio, or in mine, but somehow we are expected to make it all intelligible; to carve statues from air and make books from bark. It is too much. This is the proper work of gods and we are not gods, indeed all our human errors come from the vain belief that we are.”  

Powerful stuff, isn’t it, and who can say where the edges lie. 

Is this just a cheeky passage, or does it appear in the original work, I wonder, where the manager of the visiting acting troupe, speaking of the performance they plan on giving: 

 “… but we can do Romeo and Juliet if that is your wish. It’s not a bad bit of work, although a bit far-fetched.” 

And now, just because it’s a fabulous little metaphor: 

“…busy as a line of laundry in a windstorm.” 

Can’t you just see those sheets getting whipped hither and thither? And who but a skilled writer would think of such a domestic scene to use in such a manner?

Some great philosophy here, something which I myself would put my hand up to second: 

“It’s a terrible thing to be a coward, but it is not so bad to be prudent.” 

Kenny Rogers could write a song along those lines, methinks. 

If the purpose of teaching is to make people want to learn more and more, writers such as John Marsden achieve this beautifully. Because Hamlet says, on page 87, in reference to the/his play which the visiting acting troupe is to perform, “… I am calling it The Mousetrap”, I then Google that famous Agatha Christie play to see whether she did name her play according to that reference in Hamlet, and find that, yes, indeed, being unable to run the play as Three Blind Mice, which was the title of the original short story, her son-in-law suggested The Mousetrap, the title suggested by Hamlet, because “the play’s the thing”.  Fantastic. 

My next note is one where I’ve added exclamation marks to my underscoring just to show how brilliant I find the words. Here, after having killed Polonius, Hamlet says to his mother: 

“’There’ll be trouble with this one’, he remarked. ‘He may weigh more in death than he did in life.’” 

Weighing more in death than in life – so superbly put, and so fitting to more than just an old man in a play by Shakespeare.  

I think John Marsden put his tongue firmly in his cheek when he wrote, on page 147, when Hamlet’s mother/aunt and stepfather/uncle are discussing where to send him: 

“Further than England. To Australia. No, he’ll end up marrying some unsuitable girl.” 

Oh, as if a Danish prince would marry an unsuitable Australian girl! Preposterous, isn’t it. 

Master of the understatement, page 152: 

“And then Ophelia went mad.”  

That’s not just a sentence; it’s a whole paragraph. Look and learn, oh wordy ones (self included). 

The last passage from Hamlet: A Novel that I want to share is another where Shakespeare and Marsden meet, and do so like old friends, I feel: 

“’There’s a divinity that shapes our ends’, Horatio muttered, ‘rough-hew them how we will.’ 

Hamlet looked at him with surprise and pleasure. ‘Yes, that’s it! Where did you get that from?’           

‘I don’t know. I read it somewhere.’ 

‘I’d like to get that book.” 

And so, I really hope, will you now like to get this book. I believe that John Marsden took 12 years to write this book, and it is the one of which he is most proud. He should be; it’s wonderful stuff.