Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Book Review: The Help - Kathryn Stockett

The Help
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.

4/5 stars (really liked it)
I've had this book sitting on my shelf for nearly six months (borrowed it from a friend) and I finally got around to reading it.  Didn't seem like the type of book I normally read but I'm pretty open minded and will read outside of my comfort zone and I'm so glad I did.  I actually ended up really enjoying this book.  This book did not feel like the first book that Kathryn Stockett had written.  I thought it was well written.  I could distinctly tell which character I was reading without looking at the top of the chapters.  The author was able to give each character a voice that I could tell apart from the other.  I ended up really liking Aibileen & Minny the best out of all the characters.  The main character Skeeter grew on me.  I love how some of the secrets (such as what Minny did which I laughed when I read it) were not giving away right away but built up.  I really did enjoy it. 

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