The Help

Sarah recommended The Help to me and I thought I'd give it a try.  For the first time I processed this book in a combination of audio book and reading.  It was weird and not necessarily something I'll do again.  That being said, this was a great book.  

The Help is the story of domestic help in Mississippi in the 1960s.  Two black maids and one white woman alternate telling their stories that all become intertwined when Miss Skeeter (the white woman) decides to write a book about the maids' true experiences working for white families.  The story is heartbreaking at times and hilarious at others and just overall an awesome book.  Normally I hate when books switch perspectives back and forth because I don't feel like I'm getting a good solid voice from the narrator, but it worked here.  The chapters are kind of long and there isn't overlapping events, meaning that the reader doesn't get the same scene told from more than one perspective which I really appreciate.  I don't know what else I can say except this is an awesome (and not overly heavy, though it is serious at times) book that addresses a lot of social issues with a unique and fresh view.

Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Boy is, as the text in red says, is a father's narration of his son's decent into meth addiction.  David Sheff tells the story of his son Nick's struggle with drugs.  Nick starts his life like any other little boy: beautiful.  He loves his dad and they seem to be closer and happier than most parent child relationships, despite the messy custody situation between David and Nick's mother.  From a preteen run-in with alcohol to a marijuana habit to harder drugs, Nick seems to fall quickly.  His poor choices impact his family, perhaps his father most profoundly.  Nick's story, told by his father David, is heartbreaking and real and a well-researched eye opening read for anyone. 

It's obvious that David Sheff did his research.  He knows how meth affects the brain (to the degree that it is understood) and how rehab works.  I love how personal the story is and how easy it is to get attached to these real life people.  It seems that I've become a sucker for good characters, be they real or fictional.  This is another book that I highly recommended.  In fact, I'm now on the waiting list for Tweak which is the same story except from the perspective of the addicted son, Nick.  Read this book - do it. 

The Actor and the Housewife

At picked this up at a BYU book sale a few months ago for six bucks.  I'd never heard of it and didn't even read the summary on the flap.  It was Shannon Hale and I've never hated anything of hers and I was probably running late to class or something. 

As is obvious I've been running out of very specific things to read and I'm just grabbing what's around.  So, I pulled this off my shelf and started reading.  I figured with the kind of heavy and even downright depressing things I've been reading and listening to lately (I'm currently mid-way through Beautiful Boy) I thought something fluffy and easy would be just what I needed.    

The Actor and the Housewife is the story of normal Mormon (more on that in a minute) housewife, Becky Jack.  By some miraculous stroke of luck she ends up selling a screenplay to a production company in Hollywood.  Almost through her meeting and about to sign a contract without reading it thoroughly (hello, this is Hollywood, dumb dumb, big mistake) her favorite romantic comedy star, Felix Callahan, interrupts.  Many impossibly coincidental events later and the two are best friends.  It's hard, for Becky, to be best friends with the insanely handsome (and British) movie star without inciting the jealously of her loyal husband Mike.  Gah - I just want to tell you all the details of this story so that you'll read it and not judge it before you do and decide not to, but I can't without ruining all the things I didn't see coming.  I spent a good portion of the book trying to decide if this Mormon housewife Becky Jack was going to convert Felix Callahan (and his French supermodel wife) or allow him to destroy her marriage.  I'm not telling you what happens.  It wouldn't be fair.

I know this blog post is already rather long, but I have some things I want to say that I think are important.  Firstly, this is not a Mormon book.  The main character is a Mormon, sure, but this isn't your typical cheesy Mormon fiction (which has it's place and I enjoy sometimes).  Hale explains terms and actions when necessary so that I think a non-Mormon audience would be able to process the book quite well and still enjoy it.  It's not a Mormon book, it's a book with a Mormon character.

Shannon Hale is most well known for her YA and Juvenile fiction.  She wrote another book that I would consider more adult fiction (I hate that the term adult fiction or describing content as mature makes it sound dirty), Austenland, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.  After reading this book I really think her true genius for me lies in this type of more adult, chick-lit genre.  The book reads almost like an extremely witty blog (including the chapter titles ["In which someone gets punched at a ball but no one is seriously injured"]) and Hale is hilarious.  I couldn't help but laugh at loud when reading lines like, "The lady stared. 'Um, I've only been working here for a couple of weeks and I have no idea how to respond to that.  Would you please pretend that I replied appropriately?  Great.  Here are your room keys.'"  

Her genius also shines through as she makes this completely improbable and unreal situation seem like it really could happen by creating characters and relationships that glow with realistic human emotion.  Within twenty pages at one point in the book I was sobbing then laughing out loud (in a room by myself) then sobbing again (though I say sobbing, it was borderline bawling - I had to stop reading and get up to blow my nose).  Listen, just read this book.  I loved it and it was one of the best I've read in awhile.  After (and if) you read it please please please will you leave a comment or talk to me in person?  I want to know what you think.

Two random things. 

1) This book taught me that the phrase I'd always spelled in my head as "milk toast" is actually "Milquetoast" and comes from a comic book character from way back in the day.  All my life I figured the meaning came from the fact that both milk and toast are kind of plain, simple, unassertive flavors.  (For those of you who don't know milquetoast is a timid, shy, introverted, trampled-on person.)

2) While looking for a picture of the cover to include with this post I found another cover that's very similar and I really just do not like it.  Perhaps it's the pearls.  I don't know, I just hate it.