Book Review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

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 was an outstanding book.  Simply outstanding.  The story, the characters, the writing, the plot, everything about it was outstanding.  I cannot believe that this is Stockett's debut novel.  This was a book that makes you think about the way things are and the way things used to be.  It was deeply moving, I think I cried a couple of times and definitely laughed several times too.  The plot was so realistic it didn't read like fiction.  The Help reads like a story told between friends. 

Just One Gripe:

All that delicious food they make and eat throughout the book made me hungry.

The Best Thing About This Book:

The feeling of authenticity it evokes.

Appropriate for a younger audience:

Yes

Score:

Characters:  5/5

Plot:  5/5
Setting/Imagery:  5/5
Originality:  5/5
Ending:  5/5
Total Score:  25/25