The Help, Kathryn Stockett

Larry "Poncho" Brown, Black Is Black (Female)

(April 23) This was surprisingly gripping: that is, it's straightforwardly gripping because it's set at the beginning of the civil rights movement in the States, so the reader is well aware that death and destruction could occur at any moment; but the setting is also completely small and domestic -- it's about women with families fussing over food, housecleaning, raising children; it's not about laws and statutes. Thus, it is so odd to be worried about what might happen to any of the main characters, whether black, or white, or "high yaller," when all they are doing on a surface level is trading tips for making cakes or sewing curtains or potty-training.

Yet, of course, these homely, homespun activities are as fraught with racism and inequity as any Jim Crow law, for it's still a time of slavery, if only the last few gasps of it. So that tension is there and is built up very skillfully.

The characters are engaging, and the good and evil is spread pretty evenly throughout the cast, no matter their colour.