How you know a book is truly fabulous is when you finish it and feel a bit lost. That’s how I felt after reading The Help. I was done the story, but I didn’t want to leave that world where Miss Skeeter was writing her novel with Aibileen and Minny. I wanted to keep cheering them on and holding my breath when Skeeter finds Hilly’s been in her satchel and wish that Minny would leave Leroy. And now it’s over.
It’s a wonderful author who can so thoroughly engross you in the world she’s created that you just sit and stare a while. The Help was not only a brilliant story but also a stark look into a time in the deep South when racism was sharp, but the edges were being chafed by the likes of Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers and Rosa Parks in the growing civil rights movement. It’s a portrait of whites and the “coloreds” who served them, and how the maids fared depending on the inclinations of their missus. What a read!
I saw the movie before I read the book, and now am going to watch it again. Apparently, I’m not done quite yet.
But what do you choose to read after you’ve finished a novel that held you in thrall? I’m thinking something as far from it as I can get. Despite my many selections from the annual library book sale, I admit I did purchase a few new ones that I’ve been wanting to read, and The Camino is one of them. What a joy reading is.
