Title: The Help

Author: Kathryn Stockett

Published: February 10, 2009

Pages: 444

Genre: Historical Fiction 

Amazon / Barnes and Nobles / Goodreads

Goodreads Description: 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.

It had been about two years since I last watched The Help and I still found myself thinking about how much I enjoyed it. Instead of watching it again, I decided to read the book to see what wasn’t included. I was pleased to discover that the movie was very true to the book, and I found the movie scenes playing out in my head as I was reading.  For that reason, it almost feels like I’m reviewing both the book and movie.

Continue reading “Book Review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett // as good as the movie” →