This novel has been popular for quite some time, and with the release of the 2011 film adaptation, has continued to stay relevant throughout the 2010's. I came across a damaged hardcover copy in Barnes & Noble that was marked way down back in January (I believe it was around $8, marked down from around $30, just because a box cutter slightly damaged the cover. #score), and since I'd been wanting to read this book I couldn't pass up the opportunity to add it to my collection. I'm so happy to start reading this novel this month!
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'm a handful of chapters into this book and I'm already in love. The voices that Stockett has given to these characters ring in crystal clear and all I want to do is learn more about each one of them. Every time I pick up this book I feel transported right into the homes of the women that Minny and Aibileen work for and it is so easy for me to get lost in these pages for hours. I already highly recommend picking up this book if you haven't already! I'm looking forward to reading the rest of this book and to see what you all think of it! :)
