I've got about a billion books (it's almost true - ask Mike). And about a million of them are my favourites. Can't bear to get rid of them, can't stop buying more.
So picking just the one isn't easy. But I'll stop moaning about my own indecisiveness and tell you about The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I read it a few months ago now and through all the books I've read in the interim this is still one I think about a lot.
I'm sure there have been plenty of books around the same theme, racism in a 1960s USA where black people were mostly, well, 'the help'. And I'm sure this one isn't telling us anything new. But it's just incredibly well written and the characters are very vivid. I don't claim to know much about this period of our scarily recent history, or the struggles of people in this situation (still today, in parts of the world) but it left me feeling like I'd been part of it. I realise that sounds pretty damn conceited and very middle-class but Stockett very much succeeded in bringing this story to life. Two thumbs up!
So picking just the one isn't easy. But I'll stop moaning about my own indecisiveness and tell you about The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I read it a few months ago now and through all the books I've read in the interim this is still one I think about a lot.
I'm sure there have been plenty of books around the same theme, racism in a 1960s USA where black people were mostly, well, 'the help'. And I'm sure this one isn't telling us anything new. But it's just incredibly well written and the characters are very vivid. I don't claim to know much about this period of our scarily recent history, or the struggles of people in this situation (still today, in parts of the world) but it left me feeling like I'd been part of it. I realise that sounds pretty damn conceited and very middle-class but Stockett very much succeeded in bringing this story to life. Two thumbs up!
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