The Help

Author: Kathryn Stockett

Length: ~ 464 pages

Genre: Literary/Real 

Heat level:  Mild – for details highlight between parentheses
(Some anatomical references in an attack by a naked man)

Stars:  4 Stupendous Purple Stars 

Book Summary:

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.

Review:

This book was excellent and very well written. We enjoyed it and truly liked delving into the characters. We especially loved Skeeter and how even though she was scared, she took the plunge and dared to write something she cared about. The dialogue and the writting voices used were done so well that we felt immersed in the south. The plot was interesting and kept us reading. Will we ever read it again? Probably not. We just don’t do ‘realism’ type books. We still enjoyed it, but when we read it is for the happily ever after, we do not do well when the romance doesn’t work out. All in all an excellent read, but we won’t be picking it up a second time.