Thanks to chasidar, I discovered a beautiful book on the essence of Southern culture: the race issue. Now I know some of you are going to say, “hello The Help has been on the NY Times bestseller list for 66 weeks”, but let’s just say the bestseller list is not how I gage what is actually good…if it was, then why is James Patterson on there? No offense to you Patterson-philes…just to Patterson himself.

The Help by Katheryn Stockett is set in the deep South as the Civil Rights movement is finding its wings. Our main characters are Skeeter Phelan, a young white debutante, Aibileen, a middle aged black maid/nanny who is good at her job, and Minny, a younger black maid who has a temper that sometimes lands her unemployed. Skeeter, a naïve fledging writer, stumbles upon the idea of writing a book about the “Help” of the South. Enlisting the help of a reluctant Aibileen and Minny, the three women embark on a journey to discover themselves in a time when a culture unwilling to change is being turned upside down.

All of the characters, with the exception of Skeeter, are fascinating. From the racist dictator like Junior League president, to the silly white trash Cinderella, to the perfect maid willing to commit a crime for her family, Stockett creates a full portrait of the complicated world that made up the female side of the pre-Civil Rights South. In addition to wonderful characters, Stockett, in the great tradition of Mark Twain, recreates with stunning clarity the vernacular of both the black and white characters of the novel.

My least favorite aspect of the book was the character of Skeeter, who unfortunately a narrator for a third of the novel. She is just a weak character, with very little gumption and a whole lot of naivety. She is used by Stockett as a tool to show the perspective from the white world, but her confusion and her sympathies make her waver between a two dimensional and three dimensional character, which makes her weak and wan in the novel.

Overall, despite one flaw, the book is a gem. It is an engaging and engrossing portrait of a by-gone era.

Grade: A-

Have you ever bought a book that you thought was going to be about one thing, and then it turned out to be entirely different than what you expected? Fresh off of my adventure with John Grisham, I was in the mood for something Southern. It isn’t warm enough out here in California to embark upon a review of my dear old friend Flannery O’Connor (does it have to be a specific time of year for you to read an old favorite?) so I kept my eyes peeled for something new. As it happened, via a Facebook post, I stumbled across Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. It claimed it was Southern Gothic. I was envisioning a modern Faulkner-esque vision of the South.

Beautiful Creatures is the tale of 16 year old Ethan Wate, who has grown up in a small town in South Carolina and can’t wait to get out. His mother has passed away recently, his father is roaming the house is pajamas, leaving only his housekeeper Amma to keep him in line. Life is ordinary and boring for Ethan until he stumbles across Lena Duchannes, the new girl in town. Lena is the niece of the town shut in, and she seems different than the other girls at school. She drives a hearse, writes poetry, and wears her Converse sneakers with dresses. Needless to say Ethan is smitten. Soon, the two find themselves in the middle of family mysteries, unraveling centuries old secrets, and learning about life and love in the process.

I didn’t read the back of the book, I had no idea what it was about. But it said it was Southern Gothic. So I got it in my head, it was an adult novel about a teenage boy growing up in the South. It was definitely a Southern Harry Potter meets Twilight written for Teens. I was a bit off.

The first hundred pages are pretty entertaining, if you are Southern. There is plenty about the Southern obsession with the Civil War, family trees, debutantes, our hatred of all things strange or different, our church going ways, and secret obsession with the occult. After that, the book introduces the “supernatural” aspect of the plot, and while trying to develop a language full of strange new terms and characters, it starts to drag. Then it continues to drag for another 400 pages. The bad guys are a mix of small minded Southerners who are afraid of anything different (and that subplot is pretty thin and cliché) and a supernatural entity (who knows more about Lena than Lena does, again pretty cliché). The characters are entertaining, but nothing new or fascinating. The plotline is also just another Romeo and Juliet fighting against fate and the supernatural, so also nothing new there.

This book is definitely just for teens, preferably older (there are some boy/girl scenes and inappropriate language, the latter of which was pretty startling). I would only recommend it for huge supernatural fans, and considering the length, only for teens who really like to read. Oh, and it’s definitely for girls.

Grade: C

A short story is no easy task, in fact by most writers it is considered one of the more difficult things to write. You would think since it’s shorter and less involved it would be easier to piece together the story. I mean we all have great little stories we share around the dinner table, right? Wrong. The short story is infinitely more difficult to write, and let me explain why. A writer must create a whole world, compelling characters, and provide insight into the human condition in 5-20 pages. John Grisham can create a compelling world when he has four to five hundred pages at his disposal, but give him 40 pages, and we have a whole other world of issues. This is what I discovered with his newest venture, Ford County, Grisham’s first collection of short stories.

All of the stories in Ford County are set in Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his first book A Time to Kill. There are only seven stories, almost all involve lawyers to a mind numbing degree, and all are highlighted by the quirkiness of characters one can find only in the South. While Grisham does capture the various odd people of the South well, his repetitiveness turns them into characitures after 265 pages. I found most of the stories to be too long, and only a few were very compelling.

The highlights were: “Funny Boy” which is the tale of a young gay man with AIDS who returns from San Francisco to his backwards home town to die and “Casino” about a dull man named Sidney who realizes he is more interesting than he thought after his wife leaves him. These two tales made attempts to explore the human condition in a way that was meaningful. “Quiet Haven” about an attendant in a nursing home and “Michael’s Room” about a vengeful father both had potential, and did keep my interest until the end, but then I finished them a realized Grisham didn’t have a point. The rest of the stories were forgettable, dull, or just didn’t reach any kind of potential.

Grisham’s failure is in the fact he didn’t know what he was after, and didn’t know how to sum it up within the confines of the story. For 70% of the book I felt that my time had been wasted, I had no deeper thoughts on the plight of humanity than when I began, and I didn’t care who these characters were or what they wanted. And with all of these failures in mind, all I can say is, thank goodness he is all ready an established author.

I only recommend this book if you are a diehard Grisham fan who must read everything he writes. Otherwise, it would be bearable if you were stuck in an airport or if you are bored and it was on sale in the bookstore as a paperback.

Grade: C/C-