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The Help |  | Author: Kathryn Stockett
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  2542 reviews
Sales Rank: 13
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Edition: 1
Pages: 464
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
ASIN: B002YKOXB6
Publication Date: February 10, 2009
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Product 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.
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 2542
 Good read September 10, 2010
Yu F. Chen (USA)
I love how Kathryn describe the story line. It makes me laugh, sad, tense through out the reading. This is one of the book that I will want to keep reading without stopping. I recommend this book to whom love reading the story about black maid working for white family back to 60's, and how civil right become a hot topic during the segregation of the us history.
A six star book, The Help September 10, 2010
Just a Mom (Bucks Co, PA, USA)
I can not heap any more praise on this book that hasn't already been written. All I can say is that I couldn't put the book down. At times there was so much tension between some of the characters, that I actually had to pause and get the courage up to finish the next few pages. Help is a classic! I downloaded it onto an iPod Touch using the ibook app. Great way to read when your on the go.
 very much worth reading September 10, 2010
J'sMom
I got this book not because I had any particularly strong interest in the topic (it was interesting enough) but because of all the buzz. I am very glad I did.
Like many other reviewers said, this book was a pleasure to read. It was a page turner and if I didn't have a kid and full time job I would've finished this in 3 days. The pacing felt right and, though the topic is a serious one, the author manages to write a story that doesn't feel overly heavy. You fall in love with the characters and you really feel a range of emotions while reading. I love stories that can access my emotions in that way.
I can understand the issues that some readers had with this. I had felt something similar when I read Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a love story between 2 Asian Americans during the Japanese internment in WW2. As an Asian American I saw issues that the majority of readers did not see, but in the end I did appreciate the book for the important story about racism and the emotions. In Kathryn Stockett's message at the end of the book she talks about why she wanted to tell this story, and she is humble in her assertion that she doesn't presume she understands what it was like to be a black woman in Mississippi in the 60s. She just wanted to try and understand, and to tell the story she had always wanted to know more about herself. After reading that I felt much more empathy...in fact, I feel great admiration for her attempt to give voice to this story knowing the reactions she could get about race.
The main issue I had with the book is that, while I was reading it, I felt, "This has made-for-movie written all over it." (and sure enough, when I checked, a movie was in production) I do feel that some of the characters are somewhat caricature-ish - Minny, for example, I feel I have seen more than once on tv or in the movies (she reminds me of the maid in the Jeffersons)- and the story has a kind of predictable flow and plot that lend itself easily to the big screen.
In the end, though, I picked this book up not expecting literature but an entertaining read. Readers should read this book with a grain of salt. Stockett is a white woman telling this story of fiction, and I knew that going in. What I appreciate is that her book opened my eyes and ignited a strong interest about this time in our history. I have Alex Haley, Toni Morrison, and James Baldwin works sitting on my shelf from my days as an English lit major and having read The Help has made me decide to to revisit those books.
Outstanding September 10, 2010
Sandy (Mesa, AZ USA)
I'll join the chorus here.
A really beautiful novel. So beautiful that this author wrote it - you know at the end that it comes from her heart.
I'll never forget Skeeter, Aibileen, or Minny. Brave women - wish this story were fully true. But it does shine a light on the small and large threads that made way for change in the 1960s. This world is still segregated in so many ways - we've got to fix that. This book, if read by everyone, I believe, would lead to a change of hearts and minds. It should win a peace award, if it hasn't already.
Book shares the power of love, literature, freedom, friendship, and courage.
I would have liked to see more of Celia. Celia and Skeeter both struggled - they could have done better together. And yes, as others have said, some of the characters could be seen as a little cardboard. But it's fiction, playing in, in some sense, to the archetypes. No matter. Those tiny flaws aren't anything. This is an outstanding book, and I'm glad I read it. I feel like I've finished something monumental. Great job, Ms. Stockett.
Loved this book! September 9, 2010
dh7
This is the best book I've read in a while. I loved the characters who were well rounded, multi layered. This book is set against the back drop of the civil rights movement in Mississippi during the 60s. I had forgotten just how turbulent those days were - this book brings it all back in an honest through the eyes of the characters way without being preachy. Very well written!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 2542
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