Kalk Bay Books‘ Ann Donald sees value for all South Africans in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help - winner of the Boeke Prize - a story of black and white domestic relationships:
From the first page, the world around me ceased to exist - until after the sun had gone down 12 hours later. My first thought after putting it down was that it was so good it must rate as one of my top 10 books of the year. But now that it has settled a bit, I find myself a bit unsettled. I feel duped: it’s a good and important story, but it is emotionally manipulative - a factor that should immediately disqualify it.
The Help is the story of women, black and white, living and working in the Deep South during the early ’60s, when Martin Luther King Jr, Medgar Evers and others kept the American Civil Rights Movement on the national and international news bulletins.
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