Review The Help by: Kathryn Stockett

Title: The Help
Author: Kathryn Stockett 
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 534
Format: ebook 
Purchase: Barnes and Noble  | Amazon

Description:


Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

My Thoughts: 

What a great story about three very different women in Mississippi, Skeeter who came home to her sick mother and gets a job at the local paper writing cleaning remedies and meets Aibileen who gives her some advice.

Aibileen who has raised more white kids than one can count 17 to be precise.  She works with Mrs. Elizabeth going day to day but wanting more but when you are black and in the south that is kind of impossible.

Minny who has a brass mouth that gets her into all sorts of trouble being a black maid in the South.  She ends up blackballed by Ms. Hilly and eventually gets hired by a newcomer to Jackson Ms. Celia. 

With the help of Aibileen and Minny Skeeter writes about the lives of black maids raising white babies and how they are treated by their bosses.  This book was great a real treat and recently last night I watched the movie and loved it as well.  The three women have such a great relationship and I really enjoyed watching the book come together!!