Hi all,
I agree that this book is not a masterpiece of literature, but I find quite a lot positive things on it, for example:
- It is easy to read, even more, you get addicted to it; as some of you have also said, you get tense reading the book and you don’t know what is going to happen, it creates an atmosphere of uncertainty. I find these very positive things in a book.
- I do like the end: is neither a happy ending nor a bad, tragic one (as sometimes, reading the book, I thought it was going to be the end). I think is a good one because it is as real as real life is. Skeeter leaves, she had to, but leaves without Stuart; she leaves to NYC, as she wanted, but leaves behind many things she loves; it is a sweet-and-sour end, as many of the consequences of humans decisions are (I mean, there always are pros and cons in our acts). Aibileen is fired, although she will write the column, and Minny... everything looks so possible, probable, so real to me.
- I do like the way the reality is mixed with fiction. When reading the book I have thought that this was the original book that they were publishing and all the characters were the real ones; I thought that was 100% autobiographic. I do like the way the author makes me feel that the real facts are intertwined with fiction.
I don’t like other things, like the fact that Hilly doesn’t show many signs of being a human, i.e., she is always bad, behaving bad, is the incarnation of many of the defects that a lady in Jackson would have, but we don’t see many good things coming from her. I would have liked to see a more evolved character, not just the “bad of the movie”.
I don’t like the treatment that the author does of Constantine, she left and then she dies, we don’t know much more about her. When I was reading I thought something obscure was behind her story, but not really, the author leaves that blank, simple. I wanted some more complexity in this character or, maybe, as Judy has said with the recovery of Skeeter's mother, it could just be avoided, deleted as it doesn’t add too much to the main line of the story.
Adding to this last sentence, and as someone told me speaking about the book, I think that the author tries to combine too many things in the characters. Is Minny’s mistreatment adding something to the main story? What about the scene when the naked, crazy man attacks Minny and Celia, is it adding or explaining something crucial to the story? I think some things like these could be avoided and the book would gain some intensity, or the lines to these things could be dedicated to a deeper evolution of the thoughts of Skeeter or just making finer nuances of the plot.
My favourite character is Minny because I think she best represents the way of this colored people think, behave, express, act in their situation and she is the only one that makes me laugh sometimes with her way of speaking.
Finally, although I have enjoyed it, I think it was not the best selection for non-English speakers like me! Law, I have to review English grammar again! :)
In short, thanks to the club for helping us to discover this book (that I would have never read by my own). I have enjoyed it a lot as it is easy to read and has good details that make it worth.
