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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. (from Goodreads)
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is another one of those books I didn’t mean to like. The genre is not something I normally read, but with the movie coming out I felt that I had to read it first.
Although I have southern parents, I was not raised in the South. I do remember my aunt having black maids throughout my childhood though. Just like in the book, they did more to raise the kids than their parents did. Of course that is my opinion, an outsider looking in.
This book is extremely well written. It is not however a book that I felt I could read in one sitting. I think that is one of its strengths. It is so powerful, I could only take it a little at a time.
Did I like the book? I am still not really sure, but I don’t think I will ever forget it.
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Elaine Reads . . . constantly! 