The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
Pub. Date: February 2009
Genre: Fiction
464pp

Synopsis from BN.com:
Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:

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.

Why I Picked It:
This was on the "Ordered" list at the public library, and I do like to get ahold of the books before anyone else. I got it first, but since I was finishing up The Possibility of Everything, it had to wait a while. Honestly, as usual, by the time I got to it, I didn't even remember what it was about. Finally about a week before it's due date, I picked it up. First page and I was hooked!! Didn't have much time to read that week and so I tried to renew it. Denied. Apparently a lot of other people requested it behind me. Sadly, I returned it. But quickly downloaded the audiobook.

My Review:
Three brave women, trusting despite being on opposite sides of the racial divide, and breaking all the rules and shattering boundaries, The Help is a rich, beautifully detailed account of the entitled white people in Jackson, Mississippi and the segregated black people who serve them and raise their children.

So authentic are the voices, the stories, the relationships, fears and atrocities written in this book, I couldn't wait to find more time to walk around with my ipod on. I found myself going on longer runs, actually looking forward to folding laundry, and cleaning bathrooms. Oh yeah, and I would find myself thinking and talking in a southern drawl from time to time right after I'd been listening.

It's a story about compassion, friendship, and prejudice, not only between the races but between people of the same "kind". It's a story about humanity and hope, about giving and taking a chance. It's a story about revealing the truth - quietly, anonymously, brilliantly - in such a way that many who didn't want to accept it, were forced to see that it really was the truth. Ultimately, the many of the characters - black and white - evolve and are empowered to break free from the things that were enslaving them.

I think it was the stories the maids told that captivated me most throughout the book. Stories of the abuse the white children suffered, stories of educated black women being told they were nothing and becoming maids, stories of the humiliation of being forced to used an outside bathroom so as not to spread diseases. Stories of black people being shot in the back for raising their voices, being beaten to near death for using the wrong bathroom. The hypocrisy of it all -- the black help was good enough to cook their food, love and raise the white babies, but not good enough to pee in the same toilet that they cleaned? That whole time period makes me shudder. I was moved to tears by the stories Aibileen told, especially when they were about the babies she raised. The bedtime stories and positive mantras ("You is a good girl... You is a smart girl... You is a kind girl....") she would tell Mae Mobly, the 3 year old she is presently caring for. At naptime one day, she tells a story about a little girl with white skin and another little girl with black skin. How they look at each other and see that they both have a nose and both have toes so they must be the same, just a different color. And Mae Mobly's understanding that though Aibileen had a different skin color, they were the same, and Mae Mobly declaring Aibileen to be her "real mama". These stories made me cry.

This book is quite possibly the best book I have read this year.... maybe even better than anything I've read in the past year or so. The book has such an authentic feel - I went from laughing out loud, to nearly in tears, and ultimately could not put this one down. I think the rest of the year's reading has a lot to live up to in order to be better than this one. My highest recommendation! Will be waiting impatiently for Kathryn Stockett's NEXT book!