The Help - notes from the meeting

1. Who was your favourite character?                                 


• I liked them all; I had a soft spot for Celia – she was real white trash but she tried so hard – the bit about going to the dance!; You got pictures of Marilyn Monroe in your head *laughter*; I liked Abileen – one thing she said is ‘Kindness don’t have no boundaries’ and I thought that summed her up; Absolutely, yes she was very special; They all seemed to be brought up by the black women; And then they all seemed to become racist; Skeeter, in a way; Skeeter didn’t seem to have developed any racism – whereas the others...; I think that was Constantine; the father had blac workers on the farm and they treated the workers well; mum followed the rules of the society she was brought up with; Celia wanted Minnie to be her riend; I actually liked Minnie because she reminded me of Tosca and her mouth; she had a soft spot for Celia but was resisting the soft spot for her; poor Elizabeth was so influenced by the other women – or she wanted to be but really couldn’t afford to be – she was forever sewing; Stuart the character reminded me of Stuart who works here – but not the bits where he was arrogant and so self-assured;


2. How much of a person’s character would you say is shaped by the times in which they live ... Hilly / Celia / Minny / Abileen etc.?


• I would say all of it; Quite a lot, I think; I thought it was interesting that Hilly’s mother’s humour wasn’t so strait laced but Hilly’s was; Hilly was very racist and yet her mother wasn’t so maybe she saw her mother’s behaviour as weak; some did end up very racist, e.g. Hilly, and some didn’t, e.g. Skeeter – so how does that happen?; the song ‘You’ve got to be taught’ from South Pacific really says it all – you’ve got to be taught these attitudes and behaviours; I had a horror all the way through reading the book that something really drastic would happen to Minnie’s children – they were very vulnerable; I had a feeling that something awful would happen to someone because of the times; there were a lot of people who did treat their help extremely well; Rosa Parks was mentioned at the very end of the novel;


3. And by the environment that they live in – do you think Mae Mobley would have grown up to be racist like her mother if Aibileen had stayed working for Miss Elizabeth?


4. Which leads into racism... Aibileen expected that once May Mobley started school she would lose her respect and perhaps even her love. Is racism inherent or taught?


• It’s taught – how else could they have learned it?; my mother read this book and one of her favourite lines was about reminding her what she’d taught her, ‘You is kind, you is smart, you is important.’;


5. Any comments on Skeeter’s hairshellac system? We all alter our looks in the definition of beauty...any bizarre regiment you ever underwent?


• Some very funny stories were shared by the group involving hair rollers, rags, spiky rows, shampoos (leading to the query: What did we use before shampoo? And the idea that: We should have a Google moment and find out when shampoo was invented). And as for sharing the stories with the blog...you know what they say, right? What happens in Vegas...


6. What did you think of the relationship between Skeeter and Stuart? Were you wanting them to remain together? Could it have worked?


• I don’t think it could have worked; ? No we weren’t wanting them to remain together; I kinda did; Because you’re a romantic; He had inklings about what was and wasn’t right but wasn’t brave enough to stand up to the sister; The author may have stated that it wasn’t an autobiography but the similarities are too obvious to dismiss;


7. What did you think about Minny’s pie for Miss Hilly? Would you have gone as far as Minny did for revenge? And what about Hilly’s mum bidding for the pie for Hilly at the dance function! She has some humour – unlike her daughter.


• I’d like a sequel to see what happened after everything; it would’ve been interesting to see if the replacement help was as forthright because if she wasn’t then she’d probably turn out like her mother


8. A difference between Abileen and Minny seemed to be that Abileen could take all the abuse/put downs as part of life where as Minny couldn’t. She knew she was just as good as any of the women she worked for. Can you imagine having to put up with what they put up with? But then, perhaps we come across people like that in our own workplace, e.g. managers.


• They were good friends but they were totally different. Abileen would take the little bits of life and get through it but Minny – how many jobs did she go through? Maybe we can even relate to it today with our own managers; Miss Hilly got Abileen in the end didn’t she with the ‘You stole my silver spoon’ thing; she didn’t get her completely, though, did she?;


9. Do you think it was true to what life was like in Mississippi in the early 1060s? What did you think of the ending? As Abileen walks out of the door she says she feels free...but does free put the dinner on the table?


• What would have happened? I think things changed and she went back to university, got a degree, became a teacher and set up something for black women – that’s how I see her life unfolding during that time of change; Constantine only last for 3 weeks – do you think she died?; I wondered if she’d gotten something like pleurisy and maybe that combined with the change in temperature and her broken heart...she would have lost the will to live; i had to wonder whether Skeeter’s parentage was a question mark – they kept alluding to something and maybe you’d find out that there was some question about her dad’s identity; interesting discussion about recent news events: Paul Henry’s comments about Anand Satyanand, the Maori women who was recently dismissed from her job for not being Maori enough and the young Indian women who was thought not to look Indian


• I think it probably was true to life; it seemed to resemble movies of the time and books; I remember when Kennedy was killed – I was very young but I remember it *discussion ensues about where various members of the bookclub were at the time it happened*; for people who can remember the Kennedy assassination, we thought he was such a wonderful man who set some incredible things into action – the bits about his standards didn’t come in to play until much later; Good Reading magazine has a whole article about The Help and the woman who wrote it and the book is being turned into a film

10. How do you rate the book from 1 to 5?

• 4 ½; 5; 5; 4; 5; 5; 5; 5; 5; 5; 5; 3 ½; 4 – average = 4.7

Discussion Questions for Anita Shreve's Testimony

This Saturday we will be discussing Anita Shreve’s ‘Testimony’ at 11am in The Manurewa Library Community Room.
Discussion Questions received so far include;
1. Testimony is written from the different character’s perspectives. I found this worked well for the most part. The glaring exception for me was Ellen. The second person, “you’s” in the Ellen chapters became irritating. What are your thoughts on the author’s use of different point of views to tell the story?
2. How much responsibility do you think the parents have for what their sons did? Compare Rob’s parents, Ellen and Arthur with J.Dot’s parents, Michelle and Matthew, and Silas’s parents, Owen and Anna.
3. Sienna is an intriguing character, a kind of 14 year old Britney Spears wannabe gone off the rails. What were your thoughts towards her? Did Laura’s and Irene’s point of views, challenge any sympathy you may have felt towards her? What about her parent’s responsibility and their reaction to the incident?
4. Which character of the “incident” participants did you find the most empathy with during the book and did this change at the end of the novel?
5. Did you feel any empathy towards Mike? What do you think he coerced James and Rob into writing confessions?
6. Much was made of how Silas was brought up right, and that he would never do such a thing, it would be completely out of character. So the question is: Was the discovery of Anna and Mike’s affair the reason why the incident occurred? Or could it have been something else that would have set it off anyway, as Rob put it, “it was an act without a why.”
7. The fall out from the incident affected the rest of the basket ball team, the reputation of Avery, the Academy students, staff and parents and the town. Do you think their lives were ruined or will they get by as Rob suggests?
8. The person behind the camera wasn’t named until the last chapter; do you think it was odd that we never got his perspective on the incident?
9. Why do you think Owen and Anna stayed together and Mike and Meg divorced?
10. How do you rate the book from 1 to 5?
If any of you have any more discussion questions please bring them along...and lastly don't forget we will be having our end of year shared lunch, and selecting books for next year's meetings.