I am the kind of reader who hates a popular book. It's just that I don't like reading something just because everyone else is. For example, I didn't read The Da Vinici Code until about a year after the movie was out, and here I am, just now, reading The Help.
I actually can't say I'm reading The Help , since I'm actually listening to it! See this past weekend was Memorial Day weekend. We had Friday off, so I had a 4 day weekend. It was my friend Nicolette's bridal shower {pictures & crafts to come soon} so I had to drive all the way down to Ft. Lauderdale from Ocala. It's a 4 hour drive each way, so I figured I'd buy an audio book on iTunes. I decided to finally read listen to The Help.
You may know about this book because of the Academy Award winning movie. You may know about this book because it was a New York Times Bestseller. Either way, this book is pretty famous and you probably have heard of it.
Kathryn Stockett's Synopsis:
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.
Loved
This story's message
Eugenia {Skeeter}'s character
The unique point of view of the help
Picturing a life in Mississippi during this time frame
Loathed:
- On Audio book it took me WAY too long to read
- The storyline is slow towards the beginning
- Audiobooks in general!
All in all I truly enjoyed this book. I enjoyed this book so much that {since I was listening on audio} I held my phone up to my ear from Target, to the doctor, and even during teaching so that I could finish reading listening to the book! It's enlightening to read about segregated Mississippi and the few people who realized it needed to change. If you haven't read this book or seen the movie, I definitely recommend you do!
