The Help
ABOUT
THE BOOK
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.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
Kathryn Stockett’s novel is a well-crafted fiction that reveals the vast resilience of humanity; its ability to adapt and embrace each other in the face of adversity and changing times. Moreover the author hails the ordinary woman bestowing her honor of Hero. This act is itself is a triumph for all women. Well Done Kathryn!
This novel is filled with poignancy, humour and hope. The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.
A moving story about women and race.
This title has had a large following of readers over the last few months. It has a wide appeal of different readers.
This novel’s intriguing plot and flowing dialogue render the complexity of relations between black maids and the white children they take care of in 1960’s Mississippi.
Stockett has given the civil rights movement a new voice through her original characters – the domestic help of Jackson, Mississippi. While the novel is centered in Mississippi, readers worldwide can relate to the racial difficulties faced by these characters.
In this story of social awakening, Stockett beautifully depicts the challenges faced by both black and whites in the American South during the 1960’s, making this book particularly relevant for the patrons of JPL.
Stockett’s debut novel is full of charm, compulsively readable and shares the captivating story of women’s lives in early 60’s Mississippi.
In this engaging debut set in Mississippi in the 1960’s, an idealistic Southern belle sets out to tell the story of black maids and incites outrage in her community.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett, captures the love/hate relationships between black and whites living in the 60′, in the American South, better than any book since To Kill a Mockingbird.