Colour is Only Skin Deep

Lauded by all who have read it, including my mother, I felt sure The Help wouldn’t be as good as everyone insisted… how wrong I was. Though it took me a few pages to get into the narrative, as the plot seemed thin at the start, it wasn’t long before I had become immersed in the lives of Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter; the three women whose stories direct the novel.

Based partly on Kathryn Stockett’s own experiences of growing up with a coloured maid in 1960s Mississippi, the story introduces us to the good, the bad and the downright ugly of racial divides at this time. As ambitious writer, Skeeter Phelan, sets about making a change through the words she crafts on her typewriter assisted by the maids of Jackson, this unlikely alliance comes up against the inevitable backlash from those who live by the rules of white supremacy, chiefly Miss Hilly Holbrook. Advocating a sanitation initiative to sequester the coloured help to their own bathrooms outside the white homes they work in, and directing the state of play among her white society ladies; Miss Hilly is the ultimate villain.


Skeeter, managing to overcome the prejudice held by the majority of coloured maids for their white mistresses, strikes up a deep friendship with the women who bravely share their experiences with her, in particular Aibileen and Minny. Working together in secret to compile a novel that if published will undoubtedly ruffle more than a few feathers, and even result in punishment should the maids’ employees discover they are the inspiration behind the words; we, the readers, are drawn into a world where white children are raised by coloured maids, where marriage is the only acceptable pastime for a college graduate and where true kindness exists if you are willing to accept it.

What this story shows, when you bury beneath the layer of white versus black, is how people can surprise you with their goodness and how, against the odds, fate has a way of rewarding the good and making the bad pay. The strength and tolerance of the maids is inspiring, as is the determination and sacrifice of Skeeter; each woman places herself on the line for the greater good of telling the truth, risking friends, lovers, and most of all, their lives.

More Sour than Sweet...

The adventures of Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield were among my favourite stories during my pre-teen and teen years. Exchanging piles of books each weekend at Stanmore library to sate my voracious literary appetite and dining in on the loves, lies and sun-kissed lives of these Hollywood-standard beauties. So it was with great excitement and anticipation that I received my copy of Francine Pascal’s decade old tribute to her twin heroines, revisiting Sweet Valley High ten years on.

However, though it started well, evoking the OTT descriptions of the Wakefield beauty and the page-turning pace that kept me hooked during every other SVH tome; something started to jar this time. It wasn’t the lost love: the fabled romance between Elizabeth and former-basketball hero, Todd Wilkins had met its fate at the hands of Elizabeth’s ditzy, manipulative sister, Jessica. It wasn’t the split storytelling between Elizabeth’s rundown New York apartment and the sun-drenched Californian oasis in Sweet Valley. And it wasn’t the fact that our heroines seemed to have switched personalities in the ten years they have been absent from our bookshelves.

No, as I attempted to immerse myself in Pascal’s prose it dawned on me that the sparkle which had so attracted me to her tales all those years ago had been lost as she endeavoured to reignite the relationship she had with her heroines. They just weren’t there anymore. Their appearances may have been the same but the substance which made them who they were seemed to have disappeared and they could easily have been any blonde, blue-eyed heroine in any story. Their traits were magnified as though to remind their creator who she was writing about and there was more retrospective and back story than I could quite willingly take.

Jumping from third to first person depending on which era she was writing in, I found it fairly disjointed at best, and excessively boring at worst. It was not the Sweet Valley I remembered from my youth – the sugary-sweet tales of revenge, intrigue, friendship, romance and rivalry – it was a sad return to a much-loved film set that had long-since lost its allure and glamour, replaced now by a depressing reality.

Pascal ties up the ends of this anniversary issue in a pretty bow, making sure to end on smiles and happy endings – though a tad implausible and rather predictable – and includes a brief rundown of past characters in her epilogue. However, I sadly did not close the final page with the sense of satisfaction I had been hoping for, but then perhaps my expectations had been too high. After all, a lot can change in ten years, I guess I just thought the Wakefield twins, like so many of my literary heroes and heroines, would be forever entrenched within the pages of the stories I loved.