Word Of Mouth

The novel THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett is on my “What I Have Read” list. A good friend told me that I had to read it. I bought a copy and was so engrossed in the story that I did not even resent the two hour departure delay on a recent flight.

While finally waiting in line to board a fellow passenger asked me if the book was good, that everyone at a dinner party had said it was a must-read. While I was waiting for the next event at the family wedding (which is why we sat in DC waiting out a thunder storm in Milwaukee) another guest commented on how engrossed I was in my book. When she saw the title she said, “Oh my deacon at church recommended it.”

Don’t we, as writers and readers, love word-of-mouth? Not Oprah-size promotion or even the “what our booksellers are reading” post-its at the bookstore. But the honest-to-God type where the title and the story are on everyone’s heart and mind and lips.

I have seen this happen with rousing success a few times in my career as reader and writer. With Waller’s BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY and more recently in the romance community with Joanna Bourne’s THE SPYMASTER’S LADY.

Who knows why it happens? I welcome all opinions. Here is my theory: that these books strike a chord with readers, that the characters are so real and so endearing that it is hard to let them go so we pass them on.

There is something else on my mind in regards to THE HELP and its distant relative THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES. The idea of a public statement that “I wish I had done better,” the writing as a way to say “I wish this is what I had done.” The writer is admitting, in these two cases as regards the way blacks were treated in the south in the 60’s, that “I understand not what was happening them and this book is making it up to you the best way I can.”

They are not writing revisionist history, which was my first thought, but a heartfelt wish that they had been able to see more clearly. I know this because I am part of that world. I amreminded of the women who shaped my young life in Washington DC when it was still very much a southern town. (That's me at about age eight)

My grandmothers’ maids Sally and Ellen and our own maid, Alice, who walked me to kindergarten and listened to me chatter endlessly the whole way. Alice who walked me home from kindergarten and was there when I cried because a boy said that my drawing was the only ugly one. Alice said just the right thing (That boy liked you best of all and he say it by being mean. That’s what boys do before they’re too old to know about kissing’.) Alice and Sally and Ellen were a significant part of my life and I do not even know their last names.

So like Kathryn Stockett and Sue Monk Kidd I am taking a moment to acknowledge them and say that I wish I had understood more of what their lives were like.

What word-of-mouth books do you remember best? And what recent reading experience brought your world into clearer focus?

I am posting this from the Milwaukee airport as we head back to DC and will respond when I am home later this evening.