The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:
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.
Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam (February 10, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0399155341
ISBN-13: 978-0399155345
I have tremendously enjoyed reading this book that I even looked for another good chicklit to read right after The Help. I believe this book was inspired by real stories (there was even an issue surrounding the book that the author stole the story from their own colored maid who babysat for their family a couple of times back then and was being sued by the said maid. The maid claimed that the likeness of the characters, particularly Abileen, to her own cannot be denied however the court dismissed the case) Despite a couple of discrepancies as the story being somewhat historical (and this being admitted and mentioned by the author in the book), I find the story a real page turner and I liked that the author did not really need a love angle to make the story interesting.
There were heartbreaks, disappointments, triumphs and other emotions only a woman could understand. Maybe this is also the reason why I come to love this book since it was able to arouse forgotten emotions from me just by reading it. There was real, true emotions there and the reader can certainly feel them.
I can certainly relate to Skeeter, one of the main characters, having grown up in a family where help is a necessity, I learned to appreciate the work and labor of our household help. That being said, I would like to consider myself growing on the wrong side of town as Skeeter was. lol. I never felt that it was a privilege for them to be working for us nor was it our good graces to give them work. This must be the reason why I fought my husband hard not to get me a maid even if it is completely necessary for us to have one. Well, you know how “woman of the house” always win. lol 
On the not so good side, there were characters that remained a mystery to me although they didn’t bother me that much. Take for example the case of Miss Celia, grew up in tough area but cannot really handle housework. That didn’t sound really right. I felt that there were characters that weren’t given some justice which gives the novel a somewhat “unfinished” feel into it.
Overall, I’m giving this book a 5.
Cheers!
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