Book Review: The Help

The Help

Written By: Kathryn Stockett

                Wow. Very rare do I start a book review with that word, but this book deserves it. I loved The Help from beginning to the end. The Help is about a young white woman in the early 1960s in Mississippi who becomes interested in the plight of the black ladies' maids that every family has working for them. She writes their stories about mistreatment, abuse and heartbreaks of working in white families' homes, all just before the Civil Rights revolution. The three women who form its core, idealistic Skeeter, loving Aibileen, and sarcastic, sassy Minny, narrate their chapters each in a voice that no one else in Jackson, Mississippi, could duplicate.

                 There is real danger for these women as they begin to write these stories. But the determination seen in all three women makes them forge on in hopes the book will stay published anonymously and that the very women the book is about will not recognize the connection and stir up trouble for everyone.

                 My favorite part of the book was the connections and the relationships between the maids and the white children and the maids and some of the "kind" employers, including Cecilia Foot, who seems to be the outsider to everyone in the town. These relationsips showcase the strange history of the South. I enjoyed the history from the maids perspective. Its true, you never know the situation until you have walked in thier shoes, and although we can't go back and "walk" in Aibileen and Minny's shoes, through this book we catch a glimpse of what their world was like.

                 I can't recommend this book enough!  The story grabs you and doesn't let you go. The theme is the will of human beings to survive against all odds - because of the color of their skin. It is a heart-wrenching account and the pure cruelty of the white ladies who become dissatisfied with their maids and proceed to ruin their lives is portrayed vividly. The desperation of the maids' circumstances is truly touching. I have laughed and cried my way through this book and would re-read it again and again. I highly recommend this book.