The Help Review

Title: The Help
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
Genre: Historical Fiction 

Blurb: 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.

Me: This incredibly real story is a book about crossing the lines...that crosses the lines.

The Ups: It's so admirably daring. So many books have turned into a form of entertainment, which essentially, that's better than boring, uninteresting books, but this book shows the bare concept of a story. To cross lines. To tell a story. To teach us a lesson.

 I can't believe this is a first novel. It has so much talent and authenticity for me to believe so. It's an absorbing story, where you don't want to miss a split second of what's happening. Being a fast reader, I will skim through pages occasionally, but with The Help, I couldn't. Every detail just made me feel like I knew the characters more and I wanted to know more.

The characters were the absolute perfect ensemble. It's like when you're watching an amazing movie and you look at the cast and you think it's absolutely perfect. That was me, in this book. I think that this story really need to be told, and that these characters were the perfect ones to tell it. 

The story of these women and their small part to let others know about their lives was very touching. It makes me want to do something now in the present. This book is like the most perfect, subtle insult. Carefully though out, it highlights how racism is still inexplicably strong in our country, and how we can always make a difference.

The Downs: I feel like Kathryn Stockett sometimes added in historical events just to add historical events. Certain things that wouldn't have really been too important to the women of Mississippi, It kind of broke me out of the spell of the book sometimes, 

Overall: Really taught me what a good book is. I've missed them.

Rating: BMS!

PS. Personal thoughts about this book: I think that books have become merely a form of entertainment, desperate to sell. The Help made me realize that the true beauty of a good book is a need to tell a story.