The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
Copyright: 2009
Pages: 522
Rating: 5/5
Read: June 29 – July 5, 2011
Challenge: Take a Chance Challenge 3
Yearly Count: 33
Format: Print
First Line: Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August 1960.
Blurb: Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, raising her seventeenth white child. She’s always taken orders quietly, but lately it leaves her with a bitterness she can no longer bite back. Her friend Minny has certainly never held her tongue, or held on to a job for very long, but now she’s working for a newcomer with secrets that leave her speechless. And white socialite Skeeter has just returned from college with ambition and a degree but, to her mother’s lament, no husband. Normally Skeeter would find solace in Constantine, the beloved maid who raised her, but Constantine has inexplicably disappeared. Together, these seemingly different women join to work on a project that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town – to write, in secret, a tell-all book about what it’s really like to work as a black maid in the white homes of the South. Despite the terrible risks they will have to take, and the sometimes humorous boundaries they will have to cross, these three women united with one intention: hope for a better day.
Review: I must thank my grandmother for encouraging me to read this book. She bought it for me after she read one of her friends’ copies and loved it. For her she remembered some of the things described in this book. Having been a history major very interested in the Civil Rights era she figured that I would enjoy it. Well she was certainly spot-on with her assumption that I would enjoy it. This is not a book that I would have picked up otherwise, in fact I had read the blurb of this book many times and decided time after time that it would not be a good fit for me. I cannot believe how hilarious this book was in some spots. I read the last half of this while on an airplane yesterday afternoon, the people around me must have been curious as to what I was continuously laughing out loud about. I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s an eye-opening, hilarious read that should be read by everyone. Oh, and I wouldn’t recommend the chocolate pie 🙂
