The Help - Kathryn Stockett

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. 

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. 

After hearing so many people raving about the book and movie, I finally have gotten around to reading it myself, and now that I have finished I am a little disappointed in myself for waiting so long! It is one of the most enjoyable books I have read in a long time!

There had been a lot of poor reviews saying that the book trivialises the atrocious things that happed throughout history, but there was not once in the book that I myself felt this was happening, especially not deliberately. I can appreciate how hard this must have been for a white woman to write, let alone do it extremely well!

The story was enticing and engaging the whole way through, right up to the strong, hopeful ending, and the characters were larger than life and had personalities that leaped from the pages.

I would highly recommend this book, along with the other 5000+ positive reviews on amazon.com, and after seeing the movie I am glad I read the book first - the movie misses out so many key points and relationships and in this car the book really is a lot better than the movie.