Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The Help


I LOVED this book. Some books take me a few pages or chapters to get into, and that was not the case with The Help. I was totally invested from beginning to end. The characters felt so real and wonderful to me.

The Help is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. I've read books before from that era, but this is a different perspective of the Civil Rights movement. Some of the chapters are from the perspective of "the help," two different black ladies, Minny and Aibileen, who are maids/cooks/baby-sitters in white ladies' houses, and some are from the perspective of a white girl, Skeeter, who just graduated from college and has come back home.

Skeeter decides to start a project collecting stories from the help in their town, to find out what it's REALLY like to be employed in a white person's house. So Minny and Aibileen get the ladies in town to tell Skeeter their stories.

If you haven't read this already, please do. I can't imagine anyone not loving it.

Ladies who have read it--what do you have to add? What did you love the most about this book?

6 comments:

kate said...

Loved the book. It sucked me in from the first sentences. I listened to this book on tape and couldn't help but talk like a Southern wannabe for the entire time I was listening to it. It was a little embarassing. I don't know if that happened to you peeps who are actually literate and read it on paper, but I can see how it might.
This is probably one of my favorite historical fiction books of all time.

Andrea said...

I am literate, and I read it on paper.

I also loved it. Admittedly, it was not my favorite but I really liked it. It had me laughing out loud at a lot of parts, and the characters are amazing!

alexandria said...

Loved this book. It really made me want to go to the South and explore and meet people with southern accents. Which we then did.

Battfam said...

I, too, listened to this book and thought the readers were excellent. I, too, suddenly found myself with a southern accent. I also listened to the Guernsey Literary Society book and the readers were excellent on it too. Then I had a British accent.

kate said...

ooo Guernsey would have been a fun one for an audiobook.

good readers make ALL the difference

Chazlyn Robbins said...

Kiley recommended this book to me so I knew it would be good. Probably my favorite book I've read this year. A wonderful story about friendship and integrity.