The Help

We read "The Help" in July and it was another unanimous success. The book is set in the deep South of America in the 1960's when the times were..very slowly..changing. It concerns a group of white women and the often very complicated relationships they have with their black maids. One of the white women who has aspirations to become an author has the idea of recording the experiences of the black maids in a book, an undertaking ripe with potential problems and dangers; this was a time when the Ku Klux Klan was prominent and Blacks who stepped out of line were regularly met with violent retribution.
As the maids' stories unfold, the reader realises that although appalling maltreatment and double standards certainly did exist, that there are more positive stories also, where there is something akin to love between the women, however unequal their status. White women of the time were expected to play second fiddle to their men and themselves had fairly restricted lives, which were defined by clear social mores.So in some sense, there was perhaps more common ground than might be immediately obvious.
The book provides a fascinating social  commentary of an interesting period of American history and it is obviously deeply personal to the author who herself grew up in the deep South.
Overall, highly recommended.