Book Review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Title: The Help
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Released: February 10, 2009
Publisher: Putnam
Tags: Historical Fiction

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.

I participate in a neighborhood book group each month. November's book was The Help. I'm so glad it was chosen because I doubt I would have gotten around to reading it if I didn't "have to".  It took me 4 days to get through this audio book and I literally finished minutes before book group started last night.

This book is fabulous! Well written with great characters.  I listened to the audio version and thought the narrators did an amazing job.

I can't add much to the thousands of reviews that are already out there other than to say I think this is a book most adults should take the time to read.

Content: some language throughout and "adult" topics are all through this story.

Rating: 5 Stars

Source: Audio download from Audible.com