The first time I ever heard of this book was when it appeared in my mailbox. Sometime last year, I got involved with an online book club through The Nervous Breakdown. The Nervous Breakdown is a fascinating website that a whole bunch of different authors contribute to. You are bound to find something though-provoking, (in more ways than one), at TNB.

I finished Pictures of You within the month that I received it, but somehow, never quite got around to writing a book review of it. Shortly before writing this review, I checked the TNB website to find out when their book club talked about this book. I was certain I’d missed it, but, oddly enough, it turns out they are going to discuss this book on January 30, 2012. I never would have known it if I hadn’t gone searching for that information tonight. How lucky!

Another thing that prompted me to decide to write this book review tonight has to do with the Halfway Around the World podcast. It is a music (and more) type of podcast, that is on the Dawnforge network.

I host the show with Nathan Lott, who has written many excellent book reviews for Book Sandwich. He and I are intending to mention this book in the next episode that we record together, around ten hours from now. I find that I work better when I have a deadline to hit, and so, I made that my deadline for writing this review.

But, enough about why I read the book, and why I’m writing the review.

Pictures of You is a book about two women who are trying to escape their marriages, (for entirely different reasons). At the start of the book, readers are inside the head of Isabelle, who has just left her husband.

Isabelle is a photographer, who had been working at one of those studios where parents bring their babies to have a professional portrait taken. This, by itself, is somewhat heartbreaking, because Isabelle cannot have children, (but desperately wants one). Part of the reason why she has left her husband has something to do with this issue.

She is driving down a foggy road, very upset, and thinking about when she and her husband first got to know each other. Visibility is almost zero. She doesn’t see the car that is parked lengthwise across the road ahead of her until she crashes into it.

Later, as she is going through the healing process, she learns more about the car accident she was involved in. A woman and her son were in the car. The woman, named April, had taken her son, Sam, out of school that fateful day, and was driving to a location that only she was aware of. April died when the crash happened, but Sam survived, unharmed.

Readers later discover where April was going. She was leaving her husband, but her reasons for doing so were completely different from the reasons why Isabelle was leaving hers. Those reasons were something that April had been keeping a secret before she died.

This is one of those stories that indirectly asks readers some uncomfortable questions. How well do you really know the person that you love? Would you be able to forgive the person that you love after that person has done something absolutely unforgivable? Should you?

There are several chapters in this book that take place from the viewpoint of April’s husband Charlie, who is grieving the loss of his wife, while still trying to be a good parent to his son, (who has asthma). Leavitt really captured the way the world becomes so draining, and bewildering, for many people after a loved one has passed away. You can almost physically feel what Charlie is going through.

Isabelle becomes almost obsessed with trying to find out more about the family of the woman she unintentionally killed. It feels like she wants to make sure that they are “okay”, perhaps to reduce her intense feelings of guilt over what she has done. Eventually, she starts stalking them.

As you may have guessed these three characters, Isabelle, Charlie, and Sam, do wind up meeting each other. Their lives came together the instant the car crash happened, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before they ended up connecting with each other.

Isabelle begins bonding with Sam over photography, which she is trying to teach him about. Isabelle and Charlie both have a vast emptiness inside themselves that aches to be filled, and whole, once again. Of course, they meet. Of course, they find a strong connection with each other. All three are in a great deal of pain that was caused by the exact same incident. It is a strange thing to have in common.

I won’t say how the book ends, except to say that the ending isn’t what you might assume it would be. This isn’t the type of story that includes a simple “happily ever after” ending, painted in bright, shiny colors. That is not to say that the ending was entirely sad, only that it was complex, just like life can often be.

I found this book, and the characters in it, to be completely compelling. I wish I wasn’t so busy right now, so I could read this book a second time before the book club meets.

** An update: Upon further investigation, it appears that the TNB Book Club still exists, but they are no longer doing the online “chat room” part of it anymore. However, Brad Listi is doing a wonderful podcast called “Other People”. He just spoke with author Caroline Leavitt in Episode 39 of the podcast. I think that is pretty darn cool!

I am a gamer, and I have been this way since I was a little kid. One of my absolute favorite series of video games is the Diablo series, created by Blizzard Entertainment. I got really lucky, and managed to get into the Diablo 3 beta, (and am absolutely loving it)!

Needless to say, as much of my time as possible has been spent checking out the D3 beta. Shortly before I discovered that I got into the beta, I finished reading The Sin War: Book Two: Scales of the Serpent which was written by Richard Knaak. It is the second part of the trilogy, and is absolutely fantastic.

Since I didn’t think that too many of the readers of Book Sandwich were fanatic gamers, (like me), I decided to put my review of Scales of the Serpent over on the Shattered Soulstone blog.

Again, Shattered Soulstone is a podcast that I do with Nevik and Breja, and it is part of the Dawnforge network. Shattered Soulstone is all about the Diablo series: the games, the books, and the news, yes… but more importantly, the experiences of listeners who have played, and loved, these games.

If you would like to read my review of Scales of the Serpent you can find it here. We also spent some time talking about it in episode seven of the Shattered Soulstone podcast.

The Help is set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963 and 1964 during the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. There is some talk about what is going on around them such as the murder of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King’s March on Washington, but the book centers around two black maids in particular and the white women they serve. Aibileen is the maid for Elizabeth Lefolt and basically raises Elizabeth’s daughter Mae-Mobley. In fact, her favorite part of the job is helping to raise the children ever since her own child was killed. She tells Mae Mobley that she is kind and smart like she wants to drill those notions into her because Elizabeth just can’t be bothered to show any affection to her own child. Elizabeth is friends with Hilly Holbrook, the president of the Junior League, and they have their bridge club every Monday at Elizabeth’s house.

Hilly is the supreme racist and ultimately the antagonist or villain in the book. Toward the beginning of the novel, she starts an initiative to install separate bathrooms out in the garage for the maids because they shouldn’t be using the same bathrooms the whites use in the house. Another member of the bridge club is Skeeter Feelan who is also the editor of the Junior League newsletter. She wants to be a writer and in order to get something on her resume, she starts writing the housecleaning column for the Jackson newspaper. Of course she doesn’t know anything about cleaning so she starts asking Aibileen for some help. Skeeter doesn’t have the hangups about race that everyone else, especially Hilly, seems to have, and she is disgusted by Hilly’s comments on the matter.

Aibileen’s best friend is another maid named Minnie. Minnie is sassy, no-nonsense and she has to watch what she says around her white employers so that she doesn’t get into big trouble from. She is fired from Hilly’s mother’s employment when Mrs. Walters has to go into nursing care. The way Hilly fired her so incensed Minnie that she did something to Hilly that becomes one of the cruxes in the whole plot. Hilly tries to get her barred from employment anywhere in Jackson, but Minnie manages to find work for a previously poor (but has married up), outcast woman named Celia who desperately wants to fit in with Hilly’s group, but Hilly doesn’t want anything to do with her.

This sets the background for the main story. Skeeter comes up with an idea to write a book about the good and bad things the black maids have encountered while working for white women. It is tremendously risky and horrible things could happen to both Skeeter and any maid that helped out by being interviewed for the book. Only Aibileen, at first agrees (reluctantly) to help, and Aibileen finally convinces Minnie to help as well. The struggle is to try and get a dozen maids to agree to be interviewed. It takes a horrible thing done to Hilly’s maid for a good number of them to get on board.

I thought this book was very interesting, and I especially enjoyed listening to the Audible version. It was read by four different women; one who read Skeeter’s chapters; one who read Aibileen’s chapters; one who read Minnie’s chapters; and inexplicably a fourth that read one chapter about a memorable Junior League Gala Benefit. One of the readers even played that character in the movie version. All of them did a fantastic job of narrating, but I really enjoyed the Aibileen and Minnie chapters the most. Stockett has faced some controversy and criticism for writing from the African American perspective, but I think she wrote a really compelling story about an important time in recent American history.