Thanks to Memorial Library of Nazareth and Vicinity’s Director, Lynn Snodgrass-Pilla, for forwarding along two more book reviews:
Two novels take a compelling look at race relations in America in the 1960’s.
Kathryn Stockett’s The Help and Pat Conroy’s South Beach are two new novels that both explore living and surviving in the segregated South.
Stockett’s, The Help takes place a century after the Emancipation Proclamation, black maids are raising white children and running households but are being paid poorly, and watching the children they are caring for turn into bigots. The story is narrated by Miss Skeeter, a young white woman, a naive, and aspiring writer who wants to create a series of interviews with local black maids. Even if they're published anonymously, the risk is great to the maids who agree to take part; still, Aibileen and Minny agree to participate. Tension runs high in this novel as its events are told by these three memorable women. It’s not an easy book to read but it is well worth the effort. It may leave you with the same questions about discrimination and intolerance in the past and present, as it does the fictional characters of Jackson MS. Try it and explore the complicated theme of blacks and whites living in a segregated South. This is the first novel by Kathryn Stockett and I’m looking forward to more.
Pat Conroy is back with his first novel since 1995’s Beach Music. And it was worth the wait. South Beach switches between the 1960s and the 1980s, the narrative follows a group of friends whose relationship began in Charleston, SC. The narrator is Leopold Bloom King (his mother was a Joyce scholar, poor fellow), a likable but troubled kid dealing with the suicide of a beloved brother. Leo finds himself the central character of a gang of friends whose lives are tied to the town of Charleston, S.C. Conroy is a master at presenting the good, and the bad ff the South, as usual he’s caught between reveling its warts and admiring its survival. The book is impossible to put down, the fast paced and shifting settings will snag you even when the story occasionally gets a bit far fetched. The language sings its pure southern comfort.
Book and audio book versions of both novels are available at the Memorial Library of Nazareth & Vicinity. www.nazarethlibrary.org
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