REVIEW: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

   

      Title: The Help
      Author: Kathryn Stockett
      Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
      Date Released: January 3, 2011
      First published: February 10, 2009

      522 pages

      Rating:  ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Summary from {Goodreads}                    

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. 

Short version? Read it. It's a good novel with well-developed characters, a great story,  and it touches on some important themes in the history of race relations. 


I love Emma Stone. She's one of my favorite young actresses out there right now and I've been wanting to watch her play Skeeter in the movie-version of The Help, but I've been putting it off for so long because I haven't read the book. Well, no more delays! I finally got my hands on a copy and I finished. 

The Help is told through the narratives of Skeeter, Aibeleen, and Minny. Every few chapters they trade responsibility of narrating the story. In some books, this doesn't work well and can sometimes get confusing, but it worked here. The three of them were very different from each other, had very different mannerism, and speech so it was easy to tell who was speaking when. I think it especially worked in this case because we're looking at a story that involves completely different spheres of life that often intermingle, but continue to have set boundaries.

Frankly, I was a little worried coming in to The Help.  I was worried that the characters would be complete caricatures of the white woman/black maid stereotypes. I was worried it wasn't going to live up to the hype - even years after it's been published, I still hear about it everywhere. 

I was pleasantly surprised. Aibeleen and Minny, the two main black maids in the novel, are a little stereotypical. But there's so much more to them. I was impressed that Stockett, a white woman, was able to create such well-rounded, complex characters who grew and developed into better people over the course of 522 pages. She somehow incorporated the intricacies of black womanhood in 1960s Mississippi and balancing life as a maid and life as a mother and wife.

Skeeter, personally, was such a relatable character. She didn't quite fit in socially, politically, and physically with Mississippi's high society. Through the course of the novel, I think she's the one who evolved the most and became a symbol of the "new woman" that was coming out of the 1960s. Even now, I can relate to Skeeter's desire to get away from home and make a name for herself doing what she loves. 

My only criticism is that some of the pretty important supporting characters (Elizabeth Leefolt, Stuart Whitworth) were a little weak and a little boring. There were times in the novel, particularly when these characters were involved or at other society functions, that it was boring and a little hard to get through. I couldn't help but roll my eyes at some of it.

Overall, a good novel, good story, and good characters.. I recommend it if you've seen the movie and especially if you haven't.