The Help

I have read this book over and over again because it reminds me that even when no one is looking, you should always do the right thing. I also love how it reminds me that i can change the world by changing how the people around you interact with each other. The style of writing also just keeps me drawn into the story.

Whenever I read a book that is beyond good, I hesitate to write a review about it. Mostly because I don't give much credit to my ability to be able to make it sound as good as it is, and I'm afraid that my enthusiasm will drive people away, instead of towards reading the book. That's because I've never been able to sell anything. I'm not one of those people that can schmooze you into agreeing with me, and I couldn't sell water in the desert. It's just not one of my talents.

So take that information, and then READ THIS BOOK.

It won't matter what I say about it, because it won't be enough. The Help is probably the best book I've read in a decade. It has nothing to do with entertainment, even though there were entertaining parts. It has everything to do with the powerful and emotional themes and messages in the book.

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. - http://kathrynstockett.com/stockett-synopsis.htm

I hope to see this as required reading in high schools across the country. Place this novel next to Their Eyes Were Watching God and To Kill a Mockingbird. The Help is the resurrection of the classic novel and should be read by everyone.

I was born in the south in the late 1960's, and I was tended to by a black maid from birth through around age 10. So I could see my own history in a lot of this story, although mine came a bit later and in a big Southern city, not a small town. I recall that my single mother was always kind and generous to "the help," but while reading this story I kept wondering about the maids' point of view. I suspect they were aware that my mother had a genteel sort of racism. Kind and generous, yes, but not as though to an equally worthy human being. Certainly not to a social equal.

I cringe now at the thought of giving the maids clothes and other things we no longer needed, but I'm pretty sure none of them were monogrammed or as extremely "white" in style as Hilly's clothes were! But that's something I'd never even consider offering to my current housekeeper, because I consider her my social equal. (We both might come across the others' donated goods at the local thrift store!)

I know this book was fairly controversial when it came out, but I had no issues with the use of dialect, and other than a few unlikely bits (like that Aibileen was so accepting of a gay kid), I really enjoyed it. I can see in Skeeter some of my own early embrace of the civil rights movement, despite being raised in an environment that did not reward young white southern girls for doing that. And who doesn't love Aibileen and Minny. But I also loved Celia for the way she embraced and defended Minny and never once considered emulating the League ladies in their treatment of their maids, despite how much she otherwise wanted to be like them. (And I'm glad she finally gave up on that idea!)

“Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help


I am stingy with my rating stars and I was tough;I made it to the last chapter and that sassy, little Mae Mobley stole my heart and ran away with it. This is a moving, brave and beautiful book and the character development is just wonderful.

I loved this book! It should be required reading for everyone as it really gives a first-person account of what it meant to be both black and white in the south back before the civil rights movement. The bonus: the writing is excellent and you can't put the book down!