This novel is certainly that, a fiction, that fails to rise above its genre. White story tellers (Skeeter and Stockett) apparently go about their young lives without much noticing the blacks among them and then, magically, a conscious is implanted in the duo at college. Surprisingly, as an aside, the author nickname’s her prototype “Skeeter.” Any self-respecting southerner knows that is a boy’s handle
and a hint: not every story set in the south need be quite peppered with sobriquets.

The use of Medgar Evan’s murder is an obvious artifice used to infuse the story with a sense of legitimacy. Skeeter’s documenting the help is so passive (though Stockett tries and fails to
show it as dangerous), so far removed from real civil rights actions that she comes across as a shallow neophyte who will die her last breath absolutely out of the loop.

Real people lived and died for civil rights in Mississippi. That’s the story and that is what should be told
if one is to use it in a work, but, instead, it is adulterated in this superficial novel.

Chris Roberts

Or perhaps simply fewer new “Big Six” ebooks? As they pull back from library lending, I suspect we’ll see savvy small and mid-size publishers jump on the opportunity to increase their own discoverability. Also, there’s the possibility of the Douglas County model seeing wider adoption in 2012: “Assured About Security, More Publishers Agree to Sell Ebook Files to Douglas County Libraries” http://bit.ly/zdbiyI