Journal Entry 1 by indygo88 from Lafayette, Indiana USA on Sunday, January 10, 2010

"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."

*****

Picked up this copy at a library sale. (hardcover) Read it just recently for book club. My thoughts:

Such hype this book has received, and now I know why. Told from the perspective of three Mississippi women in the 1960's (2 black & 1 white), it brings to the forefront the very deliberate but rarely discussed line between whites & blacks, specifically the relationship between black maids in white families.

I thought this was especially well-written for a debut novel. Stockett seems to really capture the southern attitudes and dialect and as the story continues, it gets harder & harder to put down. I can't find much at all negative to say about this one, except that the last chapter or two seemed a little weak to me, not quite living up to the caliber of the rest of the book. But overall, I great read and highly recommended. I read a combination of the book and audio, and would especially recommend the audio. Although I was not previously familiar with any of the readers, they were excellent.