Book Review - The Help - Kathryn Stockett

Title:      The Help

Author:  Kathryn Stockett

Review:  This book was amazing, it took a bit to get started but wow. The way the black maids were treated by the women they worked for, cleaned for, raise their children for, was eye-opening. The idea that anyone treated people so badly, yet allowed them to love and raise their children was mind boggling. I loved the relationship between Aibee and Mae Mobley and the love she had for the children she raised. It broke my heart to think of all those babies and the love she gave them and they gave her, but the kids became just like their parents in the end. Having separate bathrooms for the help because they carried different diseases. What the heck? We are all just people, not that much different from each other. We love, we hurt, and we work hard and want to be accepted by those around us. 

I loved this book, but attitudes and behaviors take the longest to change. These women were trusted with the children, the cooking and the house and yet treated, for the most part, as dirt under a finger nail. This book will make you think about the way you treat others. Would you want the way you treat those around you published in a book? Maybe you need to change the way you treat others so you would be happy to see others read about you and your relationships. 

Skeeter had guts, she did what she thought was right even though she lost things and people she loved. Doing what is right does not always make you popular. Right is right, every time. What a amazing set of characters and relationships. I loved the stories about love between the maids and the families they worked for. Not everything was bad, but things had to change.

 

Publisher:  February 10th 2009 by Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam  

Copyright: 2009

Pages:  451  

ISBN: 0399155341

Quick Review:  5 Stars out of 5.

Why I Read it:  David brought it home from the library.

Where do I obtain the book:  Our local library.

Synopsis:  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.

Author Biography:  Kathryn Stockett was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Alabama with a degree in English and creative writing, she moved to New York City, where she worked in magazine publishing for nine years. She currently lives in Atlanta with her husband and daughter. She is working on her second novel.

Other Reviews:

NY Times

White Readers Meet Black Authors

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