THE HELP

Kathryn Stockett

MSRP $24.95, 464 Pages.

Published by Amy Einhorn/Putnam.

A young white woman and two black maids in 1960s ­Mississippi.

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.

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Articles from the New York Times

Book Review

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Customer Reviews

Incredible!

Rating

This is the most incredible novel! I couldn't put it down. This is the author's first novel - such a talented writer and such an inspiring piece of fiction.

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Why didn't anyone write about this before?

Rating

This was an eye opener...not just because it was something most of us never even thought about, but because it finally gave a three dimensional, real person profile of the disgusting racism in this country during and before the period I was growing up. It doesn't get any better than this.

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Great read - don't pass this one up

Rating

I devoured this book. I had read the short teaser and saw how many people had given it 5 stars, and I knew that I had to read this book. I asked for the book for Christmas from my husband, and drooled until the day I opened it. It was a hard book to put down. The author really knows how to evoke reader emotion. Don't let this one get by you - it's a great read for anyone.

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Book Club Winner

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I was invited to join a book club in my community and the assigned book was "The Help." I was able to order a hard cover from Amazon for only $9.50 and since I ordered more books, the shipping was free! I need to be hooked on the first few pages or I cannot finish a book. "The Help" hooked me and kept my interest until the end. The author's dialogue between the characters was so authentic. I enjoyed getting to know each character, even Hilly. I do believe this is a woman's book and I would recommend it for a good read and for the insight it may provide on the way black women were treated as domestics back in the 50's and 60's.

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Where Were You in '62?

Rating

The Help brought back to mind the time my mother and I went shopping at Fort Worth's Monnig's Department Store in the early '60s. I vividly remember drinking from the Colored water fountain and being disappointed that the water was the same old color as always. Mother explained what the sign really meant, and thus I was introduced to The Way Things Are.

Skeeter Phelen accepts her privileged status as just the way things are. Growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, she has no idea that her family's Negro maid might feel anything but gratitude for her employers. Even a degree from Ole Miss fails to educate her to the plight of Blacks in America. But returning home opens her eyes to the arrogance of her peers and the longsuffering of a group of black women she has always taken for granted. Two maids, Aibileen and Minny, courageously agree to tell their stories to Skeeter for inclusion in a written exposé that Skeeter hopes to submit to a New York publisher. Their collaboration breaks down the barriers between the classes, and convinces them all that they have more in common than they thought.

Kathryn Stockett writes her story in three distinct voices--Skeeter's, Aibileen's and Minny's. Her expert depiction of Southern dialect adds flare to an already gripping story. I even read parts aloud in order to savor the flavor of the South.

This book is an excellent read, one I will come back to again and again.

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