The Help

Oct 21, 2012 Sparrow marked it as abandoned · review of another edition Recommends it for: read Coming of Age in Mississippi instead, please

Recommended to Sparrow by: Linda Harrison, Gibney

Shelves: reviewed, disturbing, punching-tour

I have this terrible, dreary feeling in my diaphragm area this morning, and I’m not positive what it’s about, but I blame some of it on this book, which I am not going to finish. I have a friend who is mad at me right now for liking stupid stuff, but the thing is that I do like stupid stuff sometimes, and I think it would be really boring to only like smart things. What I don’t like is when smart (or even middle-brained) writers take an important topic and make it petty through guessing about wh...more

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Gav451 While I disagree with much of what you say I like the fact you said it well and in detail. Thoroughly enjoyable review because at least you have an op...more
Jun 04, 2013 12:13pm

Sparrow Thanks, you guys!

Nicole, sorry I forgot to respond earlier. I read your comment at work, and then I forgot to go back to it when I got home. I think I...more Thanks, you guys!

Nicole, sorry I forgot to respond earlier. I read your comment at work, and then I forgot to go back to it when I got home. I think I would say that the problem I have with the circumstances in the Kiterunner and here are not so much because of the reactions of the main characters as they are about the perspective of the victim. I think it is fair to write a tragic circumstance that happens to a secondary character, and I think it is fair to write it in such a way as to bring out character traits of the main character.

The problem I have is when the secondary-character/victim is also more concerned with the main character's reaction than their own victimization. That just rings false to me and requires more explanation in the narrative, I think. Like, either the victim is selling something in pretending to not care about his/her own victimization or the victim is seriously mentally ill, and either way, under those circumstances, the interesting thing happening there is not the main character's reaction. The interesting thing becomes the victim selling something or the victim's mental illness in being so concerned with the boring main character.

In those cases, I think the victim's entire perspective has been exploited to the service of the main character's perspective. But, I also think that in the Kiterunner, and here, it is because of bad writing, not because of any kind of plan on the part of the author. I think it's easy enough to imagine a secondary character's self-possessed perspective and the anger or bitterness or pity the secondary characters would feel for the main characters, but in order to do that, to give a more dignified voice to the secondary characters, the authors might have to step a little more out of their own culture and raising.

At the same time, though, I'm thinking about the maids in The Help when I'm talking about secondary characters, and the book is actually from their perspective. So, I think that is a clear illustration of the problem - the maids' voices are hijacked here to tell a story, not about themselves, but about this silly white girl. That, to me, especially when the maids allow the book to become a hot-issue story, is exploitative.(less)
updated Jun 09, 2013 09:21am

Jul 28, 2009 Annalisa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Annalisa by: Jeana Quigley

Shelves: book-club, historical-fiction, voice

Here is an illustrative tale of what it was like to be a black maid during the civil rights movement of the 1960s in racially conflicted Mississippi. There is such deep history in the black/white relationship and this story beautifully shows the complex spectrum, not only the hate, abuse, mistrust, but the love, attachment, dependence.

Stockett includes this quote by Howell Raines in her personal except at the end of the novel: There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that o...more Here is an illustrative tale of what it was like to be a black maid during the civil rights movement of the 1960s in racially conflicted Mississippi. There is such deep history in the black/white relationship and this story beautifully shows the complex spectrum, not only the hate, abuse, mistrust, but the love, attachment, dependence.

Stockett includes this quote by Howell Raines in her personal except at the end of the novel: There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism. An eloquent way to describe Stockett's intentions for this novel. I know most reviews will probably focus on the racial relationships in the book, but to me the most haunting statement was that when you are paying someone to care for you and their livelihood depends on making you happy, you can't expect an honest relationship.

I did not expect this book to hit so close to home. After all, I did not grow up in the South and completely missed the racial mind shift in the country. But the book isn't just about racism and civil rights. It's about the employer relationship too. And I did grow up in South America with a maid trying to keep herself out of poverty by making our crazy family happy. As much as we loved her, I can see so many of the pitfalls from these complex relationships in my own history. I know our maid was stuck between pleasing my mother and raising us the way she believed appropriate. I know it was physically hard to work from sunup to late everyday and emotionally hard to never relax because she wasn't the decision maker of our home and at any moment she could be reprimanded for making the wrong decision. She had absolutely no power, and yet she was all powerful to shape and mold us.

I needed her, felt bad for how much I imposed upon her, but I never voiced how much I appreciated or loved her. I took her for granted. Even though she was paid to love us, I know she did. We were her children, especially my youngest brothers. And yet when she moved back home, we lost contact. Was it out of laziness of our own narcissistic lives or was the complexity of our relationship so draining she cut the tie? It is my fear that she thinks we did not return her affection and only thought of her as the maid. I often think about her, we all reminisce about her wondering where she is, and more than anything, I just want to know that she is happy and tell her thank you. It is so strange that someone who is such a vital part of your childhood can just vanish out of your life. "They say its like true love, good help. You only get one in a lifetime." I know. Believe me, I know.

The story is strong and real and touched something deep inside me. I could so relate to the motherly love from Constantine to Skeeter, see that pain in the triangle between Aibileen and Mae Mobley and Elizabeth, feel the exasperation of Minny toward Celia, and understand the complexity of the good and bad, the love and hate, the fear and security. Stockett captured all these emotions.

I also loved the writing style. When style compliments plot, I get giddy. I don't always love grammatically incorrect prose or books about an author trying to be published, but here it works because it's honest. The novel is about a white woman secretly compiling true accounts of black maids--and the novel is in essence a white author trying to understand black maids. The styles parallel each other as do the messages. The point of Skeeter's novel is to make people see that people are just people no matter the color of their skin and Stockett's novel beautifully portrays that with both good and bad on both sides. The fictional novel cover is decorated with the white dove of love and understanding. To get us there, Stockett gives us three ordinary birds, a picture of ordinary life asking to be accepted for its honest simplicity.

This book is Stockett's masterpiece, that story in her that was just itching to get out. From the first page, the voice of the characters took vivid form and became real, breathing people. I loved Aibileen, but think I loved Minny's voice more because she is such a strong character. Besides the maids, I loved Hilly as a portrayal of the white Southern belle with the ingrained belief that black people are not as good as whites, verbalized as "separate but equal" so it doesn't sound racist. My favorite scene was when Hilly says they have to be careful of racists because they are out there. She's a bit over the top, but if you've been to the South, not that far of a stretch. I just would have liked to find some redeeming qualities in her from Skeeter's perspective.

While there are some instances where I felt Stockett was squeezing historical facts into the novel, forming the plot around these events instead of letting them play backdrop, and occasionally I could read the modern woman in this tale pushing her message too hard, Stockett's sincerity to understand and appreciate shines through. She lived this book to some extent and the story is a part of her. Because it's important to her it becomes important to me. (less)

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May 31, 2013 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books, historical-fiction, made-me-cry, race-relations, favorites, women, library-books, shelf-inflicted

Also reviewed at Shelf Inflicted

One of my co-workers, a guy who isn’t much of a reader, borrowed The Help from the library based on his English professor’s recommendation. The guy just couldn’t stop talking about the story, so I decided to borrow the audio book. It’s not very often I get to discuss books with people in real life and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip by. Audio books are good for me. I was so engrossed in the story and characters that I drove the speed limit on the high...more
Also reviewed at Shelf Inflicted

One of my co-workers, a guy who isn’t much of a reader, borrowed The Help from the library based on his English professor’s recommendation. The guy just couldn’t stop talking about the story, so I decided to borrow the audio book. It’s not very often I get to discuss books with people in real life and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip by. Audio books are good for me. I was so engrossed in the story and characters that I drove the speed limit on the highway and took the scenic route while running errands. Sometimes I went out at lunch and needlessly drove in circles, or sat in the parking lot at work, waiting for a good place to stop.

It is 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi. Twenty-two year-old Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan has returned home after graduating college to find that Constantine, her family’s maid and the woman who raised her, has mysteriously disappeared. Aibileen is a black maid in her 50’s who works for the Leefolt family and cares deeply for their daughter, Mae Mobley. She is still grieving for her young son, who died in a workplace accident. Minny is Aibileen’s closest friend and a wonderful cook, but her mouth keeps getting her into trouble and no one wants to hire her, until Aibileen helps secure her a position with Celia Foote, a young woman who is new in town and unaware of Minny’s reputation.

The story jumps back and forth between the three characters, all of them providing their version of life in the South, the dinner parties, the fund-raising events, the social and racial boundaries, family relationships, friendships, working relationships, poverty, hardship, violence, and fear. Skeeter’s mother wants her to find a nice man and get married, but she’s more interested in changing the world. Her plans to anonymously compile a candid collection of stories about the maids’ jobs and the people they work for will risk her social standing in town, her friendships, and the lives of the maids who tell their stories.

I loved this story! The characters really came alive for me, and the author did a good job acknowledging actual historical events which lent richness and authenticity to the story. I laughed and cried, felt despair and hope. This is an important story that is a painful reminder of past cruelty and injustice. It shows how far we have progressed and how much more we still have to accomplish.
(less)

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Dec 17, 2011 Julie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2011, usa-historical

I sat down one evening to skim through the first few pages of The Help to determine if I would proceed with a full read. I was immediately hooked and a couple of sessions later I closed the back cover. I didn't have to work hard- this is a compulsively readable novel. That this is such an easy read troubles me. Its subject matter is as heavy as Mississippi in August, but the tone is often as breezy as girls' night out in Venice Beach.

For all the accolades and attention Kathryn Stockett has recei...more I sat down one evening to skim through the first few pages of The Help to determine if I would proceed with a full read. I was immediately hooked and a couple of sessions later I closed the back cover. I didn't have to work hard- this is a compulsively readable novel. That this is such an easy read troubles me. Its subject matter is as heavy as Mississippi in August, but the tone is often as breezy as girls' night out in Venice Beach.

For all the accolades and attention Kathryn Stockett has received for telling the hidden-in-plain-sight truth of Jim Crow South in the 1960's, I felt cheated by her story-telling. Aibileen and Minny, black women who have spent their lives in service to white families, are portrayed with unsentimental clarity. These women are the real stories, the voices I most wanted to hear. Yet it was as if Stockett didn't trust her ability to carry a full novel in these characters. Instead, she relies on Skeeter - a young white woman who is having a "Eureka" moment of conscience and self-awakening - as the central protagonist. Skeeter is not a compelling narrator and every moment with her was a moment stolen from the characters whose lives should have been the central focus, the eponymous "Help".

In addition, the character of Celia is wasted in a mush of contradictions and implausible behavior. It makes zero sense that a tough-as-nails girl from the hollers couldn't boil water for coffee. Her presence in the plot is inexplicable, as she neither evolves as a character nor moves the story along. Oddly enough, I adored her. I just wish she would have been allowed to grow and participate in the story, instead of remaining its unfunny punchline.

The narrative comes alive in the delicate dance of shame, anger, control and love experienced by so many of the characters, white and black. The real story is rock-solid Aibileen in the Leefolt home as the family cook, maid and child care provider; it is rebel Minny submitting to her abusive husband, determined to keep her family together; it is society-grasping Elizabeth Leefolt, as she feels the desperate tug between convention and her conscience, which struggles to rise from the swamp of racial segregation; it is the deep love between Aibileen and little Mae Mobley Leefolt, contrasted brilliantly with the cold affect Mae Mobley receives from her emotionally stunted mother. These relationships are so compelling, you know that Stockett is writing from her heart, and they are what make this a beautiful read.

The awakening of the women who constitute "The Help" as they tell their stories is also remarkable. But again, the milquetoast and ironically ambitious Skeeter, with her hapless attempts at romance, gets in the way. There is a moment when her motives at gathering and publishing these stories are questioned by an embittered maid, Gretchen, but Stockett drops this in and quickly retreats. It's as if she isn't certain herself who should profit from the telling of these stories, the white woman who can walk away from controversy to a shiny new life in New York City, or the black women who risk everything- their jobs, their homes, their lives- to share the truth.

In the end, I felt that The Help was written with the specific motive of attracting mainstream success. There is potential for a much more profound and revelatory story from this gifted and passionate writer. It made me long for the heartbreaking honesty and poetry of Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and the novel that changed forever how whites told the story of Jim Crow, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. These novels have withstood the test of history; I don't see The Help holding the same ground.(less)

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Jul 06, 2011 Caroline rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was uncomfortable with the tone of the book; I felt that the author played to very stereotypical themes, and gave the characters (especially the African American ones) very inappropriate and obvious voices and structure in terms constructing their mental character. I understand that the author wrote much of this as a result of her experiences growing up in the south in the 1960's, and that it may seem authentic to her, and that she was even trying to be respectful of the people and the time; b...more

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Jun 21, 2010 Ellen rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

The Kindle DX I ordered is galloping to the rescue today...

description

AND, for all the book purists (which would include me), this is a need, rather than a want. Post-several eye surgeries, I'm just plain sick of struggling to read the words on a page.

However, despite the visual challenges, I read all 451 pages of The Help yesterday. Clearly, the book held my interest. However, I spent last night pondering why the book wasn't as good as my nonstop reading would indicate.

What was wrong?

Most of all, I thin...more

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Jun 23, 2011 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: for-kindle, 2011, reviewed

“It's true. There are some racists in this town,” Miss Leefolt say.
Miss Hilly nod her head, “Oh, they're out there.”

Law, this book be good! I’m on tell you how good this book be. Everthing ‘bout this book be good, you gone read this book and you gone see what I’s mean. Law!

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Feb 17, 2012 Lora rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Lora by: Flannery

Shelves: lib-audiobooks

". . . I think about all my friends, what they done for me. What they do ever day for the white women they waiting on. That pain in Minny's voice. Treelore dead in the ground. I look down at Baby Girl, who I know, deep down, I can't keep from turning out like her mama. And all of it together roll on top a me. I close my eyes, say the Lord's prayer to myself. But it don't make me feel any better. Law help me but something's gone have to be done."

Note: My opinion on this is very much colored by t...more ". . . I think about all my friends, what they done for me. What they do ever day for the white women they waiting on. That pain in Minny's voice. Treelore dead in the ground. I look down at Baby Girl, who I know, deep down, I can't keep from turning out like her mama. And all of it together roll on top a me. I close my eyes, say the Lord's prayer to myself. But it don't make me feel any better. Law help me but something's gone have to be done."

Note: My opinion on this is very much colored by the fact that I listened to the audio and it is like chocolate for the ears.

The Help is a story told from three woman's perspectives: Aibileen, Minny, and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan. It is the story of their lives, their struggles, and their attempt to right some of the wrongs that are happening all around them; the ones most people choose to ignore and even partake in. It is about the African-American race and the egregiously awful way they were treated by their employers and the authorites back in the early '60s. It is about one young woman's courageous plan to write a book that could change many lives for the better, or possibly destroy them. It is about speaking out when you are told to shut up; standing up for what you believe in; and, most of all, not being afraid to break out of the mold people see fit for you. It is about life: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful.

We all know that The Help is outrageously popular, that it is one of those break-out debuts that are highly acclaimed and usually made into a movie (check, check). With this kind of popularity comes both negative and positive reviews; all of which are very vocal, often more so on the negative side. This along with the fact that the audio is over eighteen hours long and that it is commercial fiction made me just a wee bit hesitant to try it. But I'm glad I did.
The Help made me feel joy, sadness, hatred, and hope — sometimes all at once. It is the sort of story that takes patience and a liberal mind to stick with it to the end, but it is well worth it in my opinion. I feel better for having read this story and, love it or hate it, The Help is a story you'll be hearing about for many years to come. 3.5 stars

P.S. Thanks a lot for the recommendation, Flannery. Sorry it took me so long to get to it.(less)

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Apr 25, 2011 Cheryl rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I may be a dissenting voice here, but really, what's all the hype about??
While i found the story line somewaht intriguing and the book did hold my interest, i didn't find it to be particularly engrossing, much less compelling.
The first thing that smacked me right in the face was the whole dialect issue. Not knowing much about the book, after reading the first few sentences I flipped to the back cover over to reveal, yep, you guessed it, the all knowing white lady speaking for the oppressed and...more I may be a dissenting voice here, but really, what's all the hype about??
While i found the story line somewaht intriguing and the book did hold my interest, i didn't find it to be particularly engrossing, much less compelling.
The first thing that smacked me right in the face was the whole dialect issue. Not knowing much about the book, after reading the first few sentences I flipped to the back cover over to reveal, yep, you guessed it, the all knowing white lady speaking for the oppressed and disenfranchised colored women that cared for the homes and families of generations of thier white employers in the racially charged South. Really? Quite simply put, it didn't seem it was her story to tell. But I implored myself to keep an open mind and allow the story to unfold and tell itself. After all, this book seems to be wildly popular and capturing the attention of many.
I give Ms. Stockett props for tackleing the sensitive historical topic, or should I say blight? of racism in the early 1960's smack dab in Mississippi. At times she handles it deftly, though more often I thought it lacked depth, diminsion, true substance. While she employs the main characters to illustrate the tension of that era and there is no denying the huge racial divide, she uses mighty broad brush strokes to paint her one diminsional central white female characters as primarily lazy, self absorbed, materialistic, hypocritical Jr. League do-gooder egomaniacs, while their help are mostly a nuturing, kind, loving, hard working tight knit clan, who shower their young charges with patience, genuine affection, and care, empower them with the self esteem and self reliance that their ill equipped Mothers are unable to provide, due to the generational neglect and hyper criticism of their own Mothers. Again, Really? Are we swallowing this type of overreaching sterotyping? She gives a nod or two to a few of the periphial WF characters as possessing some moral fiber, but for most of them it is non existant. While these strokes are broad, other parts of the canvas are brushed over with light vague strokes, such as the intenseness and seriousness of the racial issues of that time, ie the refrences to Medgar Evers, etc. When put in perspective of the mundane day to day life of these women, it felt like an slight afterthought she managed to squeeze in. While it did keep me turning the pages, and I'm not sorry I read it, I found it to be flacid, predictable, at times inplausible, with an underdeveloped thin and slow plot line, sadly devoid of the beautiful eloquent prose of the famous Southern writers we know and love, Mark Twain, Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell, Alice Walker, Pat Conroy.
It was Ms. Stockett's first novel, and it shows. This book was kindov like when you see that Blockbuster movie everyone is raving about, and go "Huh?" To me it read like watching "The Blind Side", much ado about nothing. (less)

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Apr 13, 2010 karen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: it-is-for-class, littry-fiction

enthusiasm!!!

this book and i almost never met. and that would have been tragic. the fault is mostly mine - i mean, the book made no secret of its existence - a billion weeks on the best seller list, every third customer asking for it at work, displays and reviews and people on here praising it to the heavens. it practically spread its legs for me, but i just kept walking. i figured it was something for the ladies, like sex and the city, which i don't have to have ever seen an episode of to know...more
enthusiasm!!!

this book and i almost never met. and that would have been tragic. the fault is mostly mine - i mean, the book made no secret of its existence - a billion weeks on the best seller list, every third customer asking for it at work, displays and reviews and people on here praising it to the heavens. it practically spread its legs for me, but i just kept walking. i figured it was something for the ladies, like sex and the city, which i don't have to have ever seen an episode of to know that it's not something i would enjoy. i figured that this book was on the ladder one rung above chick lit. so i am to blame for my snobbish dismissiveness, but have you seen this cover?? what is with that sickroom color scheme? and i hate those stupid little birds. what is chip kidd so busy doing that he can't just pop over here and lend a hand?? it is not my fault for thinking it was a crappy book when that cover wanted me to think it is a crappy book.

but this book is good. really, really good. again, i thank you, readers' advisory class, for fixing me up with this book. it has been a long time since i have read such a frankly entertaining book. (if a book about the emotionally-charged early days of the civil rights movement can be called entertaining.) this is just an effortlessly told story, split between three different women, whose voices and perspectives never run together - the secondary characters are also completely believable and are all different brands of repellent, with some token sympathetic characters tossed in for the halibut. i don't even know what to say, i just feel all "aw, shucks, i loved this book" about it - there were several times i would catch myself grinning at a turn of phrase or a situation, and every time i would start to doubt myself, that maybe i would like sex and the city. or buffy the vampire slayer or all these things i have formerly judged without having read/seen/eaten. maybe i am like these white women in the book, taking their help for granted and assuming they have nothing to say to each other because of their unwillingness to talk to them and know them as human beings. maybe buffy and i have so much to learn from one another...

then i would snap out of it and remember that my gut opinions are 99.99% foolproof.

so for you other people, who need to be swayed by hype - i give you hype. this book's hype is merited - it would be a perfect book to read this summer when you are melting from the sun and need a good story.. this is a very tender and loving book, about hope and sisterhood and opportunity, but also about beatings and terror and shame.

still hate those birds, though.(less)

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Sep 17, 2011 Eric_W rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, current-affairs

This book has a kazillion ratings and reviews so I doubt there is little I can add. I found the story and dialog to be quite believable. As someone who came of age during the sixties I well remember the battles, both physical and verbal, between the “separate-but-equal” crowd and those pushing hard for civil rights. We lived in a suburb of Philadelphia and my mother had a lady come in once a week to do the cleaning. I happened to be home from school one day - it must have been a holiday or somet...more This book has a kazillion ratings and reviews so I doubt there is little I can add. I found the story and dialog to be quite believable. As someone who came of age during the sixties I well remember the battles, both physical and verbal, between the “separate-but-equal” crowd and those pushing hard for civil rights. We lived in a suburb of Philadelphia and my mother had a lady come in once a week to do the cleaning. I happened to be home from school one day - it must have been a holiday or something - and at lunch I took my bowl of soup and crackers into the dining room with my book (reading, not TV, is the foundation of anti-social behavior) while my mother and the cleaning lady (it still is irksome to use that term) ate in the kitchen. My mother later told me the lady said it was the first time she had ever sat at the same table to eat something with a white woman. (My mother had issues of her own, but they had more to do with educational elitism than race per se, witness her early antipathy to our adoption of several mixed-race children whom she perceived to be a less than stellar intellect. This was in the early seventies when cross-racial adoption was still a rarity.)

Much as I despise religion, I have to give it credit for providing the impetus (at least in the north, but also in some churches in the south) for the civil rights movement. It was distinctly a religious crusade, fostered by the National of Islam under Elijah Mohammed (the so-called Black Muslims,) some Catholic priests like the Berrigans (much to the dismay of their bishops) and many Protestant ministers. Bombings of churches could only lend more credibility to the marchers.

I was attending a Quaker school and remember hearing stories about one family in the Meeting that adamantly refused to permit letting blacks into the Meeting. This was in the fifties. Since Quakers have to do everything by consensus, they could essential block black membership. The issue remained unresolved until the family saw the proverbial handwriting on the wall and moved away.

I read many of the reviews and comments on Amazon and was struck by a couple who thought the book demeaned black maids. I found just the contrary, that if any group was degraded, it was the clique of white girls who, with only a few exceptions, didn’t do anything of worth and cared mostly for clothes, boyfriends, and whether a black ass had sat on their white toilet seat. Some African American readers felt the black maids were demeaned by the book. I find many of these comments quite interesting because I don't think the book is about black maids at all. I think it's about a vapid white culture that is concerned with appearances and boys, and make-up and whether their precious behinds will be soiled by sitting on a toilet that might have been used by a black person. For me, the book ridiculed that white culture and showed how one person made an attempt to cross over and understand the other culture's point of view, but it remains the perception of the white culture at the time so by necessity, the view of black dialect and actions must be a flawed one.

I loved the scene where Abilene is trying to potty-train Mae Mobley and is in a quandary because the child needs to see how adults do it, yet Abilene is terrified to use the bathroom in the white house rather than the colored one built for her in the garage. So she shows her the colored one which Mae Mobley Leefolt then wants to use all the time, to her white mother’s horror.

Yes, there are some anachronistic events, yes, the dialect seems forced sometimes. So what. Outstanding book that reveals the tensions of being black and a decadent and dying white culture in the United States during a period of cultural upheaval.(less)

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Aug 11, 2011 Salome G rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The story itself: This could have really used a better editor. I didn't understand why the boyfriend character was even in there--he added nothing to the story. In addition, Skeeter keeps telling us that Hilly and Elizabeth are her friends but that's just it--she tells us. We never see why she would want to be friends with either of them, Hilly especially. Other characters were equally unbelievable. All the maids are good people and so gracious to Miss Skeeter, save one. Reading their interactio...more

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May 03, 2010 Valerie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

I don't know what I can add to what already has been said because so many people have read this book already. And yes I'll admit that I read it because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I couldn't believe how enthralled in the book I was. I didn't read it fast, though I was pretty much hooked after the first chapter about Aibileen. I could just feel the south just oozing out of her words, and you can't really get more south than Mississippi.

The Help stays pretty air-tight to what was...more

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Feb 11, 2010 Sarah Null rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Sarah by: Alison

Shelves: book-club, book-club-dm

Having spent two of my formative years in North Carolina, I can tell you that racism and classism are still very much alive in the Deep South. Fortunately, we've come a long way, but there is still a long way to go.

But this book is about so much more than the way maids were treated in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. It's more than a story of how the Junior League president ruled the lives of pretty much everyone in town. Mostly, it is a story about doing something. Taking action. Trying to change t...more

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Nov 05, 2010 Joanna rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-21st-cent

I've completed 69% of this book on Kindle, and must wait a week to read the rest. Roger is taking my Kindle to Ireland, so I'll be reading a different "real" book this week.
I LOVE this book, with it being one of my favorite book ever. The Help is well written and well researched, giving unique insight into the black maids living and working in the southern US during the early 60's. As a child growing up in Atlanta, Lillie Frazier came to our house three times a week. She loved and nurtured me in...more

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Terri I did not grow up with a life like that, nor was I raised in the south. But one thing it did for me, was open my eyes..I liked this book.
Dec 14, 2011 10:49am

Wynyard I grew up in the east Texas, which was more like Georgia (where my parents came from) in its pine trees, red dirt, and social attitudes. This was in t...more I grew up in the east Texas, which was more like Georgia (where my parents came from) in its pine trees, red dirt, and social attitudes. This was in the '40s and '50s. We had 'help', and that's really how these women were referred to. We had a cleaning lady, who let me choose my hair ribbons. Then we had an ironing lady, who sang gospel as she ironed. Then we had Ernestine, who was with us until I was in college. "Miss Teenie" was probably in her late teens when she came to us, too young to be a substitute mother, but young enough to become a friend to visit with after school. She taught me to boogaloo.
No, I never heard of a separate maid's toilet. All our friends had help, and they didn't have separate facilities. Our family was certainly middle class, Mother a school teacher and father a railroad middle executive. I thought the author had mixed up her generations. I was married in the late '50s, and the young couples didn't really have maids. I asked my daughter what she thought about that, and the Junior League and bridge club, etc. I said, surely that was my mother's generation...or maybe a FEW of my old high school friends. She said, Mom, they STILL do have maids and do junior league and bridge! Hmmmm. After all the time I've spent with N.O.W. and pushing the glass ceiling. Not such a brave, new world after all.
'Teenie died about 15 years ago. She had visited us when she came through town twice. I have a photo of her holding my grandson. She raised two other girls after me, and came with the family to see them graduate from college. She had no children of her own. When I visited her after I was married, she was living in a tiny poor house, on a dirt road, underwritten by her 'family' (after us). Wood floors almost scrubbed through. Photos of "her children" on the dresser. She deserved much better. I never thought she'd die, and when I learned she'd been taken by her incessant cigarettes and lung cancer, I cried as much as I did for my mother, though a different kind of grief. There are tears even now.

I wonder what she would have thought of "The Help". I wish she and her church friends had written a book.(less)
Feb 12, 2012 02:38pm

Feb 22, 2013 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookclub-reads

I loved it, sorry, but I really did. It is heartwarming and heartbreaking and a bit heart attack inducing when you encounter some of the characters who deserve nothing less than a big kick up their bigoted behinds.

Set at the beginning of the 1960's in Jackson, Mississippi it is the story of three women and the friendships that develop between them. The notable detail is the fact that two are black servants and one is a white woman of the Jackson gentry. The story is told through the accounts of...more I loved it, sorry, but I really did. It is heartwarming and heartbreaking and a bit heart attack inducing when you encounter some of the characters who deserve nothing less than a big kick up their bigoted behinds.

Set at the beginning of the 1960's in Jackson, Mississippi it is the story of three women and the friendships that develop between them. The notable detail is the fact that two are black servants and one is a white woman of the Jackson gentry. The story is told through the accounts of the three women as they move through their different lives but all growing closer and closer in the action that binds them together; the gathering and writing down of the accounts of thirteen black maids for publication in a book ' The Help ' by a New York publishing house.

It is powerful because Stockett manages to create three fairly distinct voices for her heroines and each contributes in her own individual way to the unfolding of the story. The dialogue is, in part, really funny and filled with life and character and at other times astoundingly moving.

However there are a few caveats to my praise. There are rather a lot of peripheral characters who do not add much to the overall moving forward of the plot and confuse the situation somewhat and some rather ridiculous sub-plots which are just total nonentity cul de sacs. Yes, naked man in the garden, i am talking about you.

Whenever i encounter huge pantomime-like villains, or in this case villainesses eg Miss Hilly, my 'is this really believable' gene kicks in. She seemed too petty, vicious and unnecessarily cruel all mixed up into one to be real and her position as Queen Bee seemed ridiculous because why would someone so stupidly egocentric and foul have ever got to the position of fashionista anyway. How did Skeeter, who admittedly at the beginning of the novel was a bit of a WASP though maybe without much of the protestant part, come to be friends with the hideously nauseous Hilly and the crassly stupid Elizabeth. I spent a good deal of her sections attempting to understand how she could ever have been mates with the two of them.

There were some moments of a delicacy and sensitivity which actually took my breath away; the encounter of Skeeter with the perpetually disregarded depressive who was one of the very few white women who shone in terms of her goodness and relationship with her maid and the lesson Skeeter took from that conversation was lovely, the beauty of the burgeoning relationship of Celia, Johnny and Minny climaxing towards the end of the book was truly lovely and I loved the throwaway line of the publisher concerning the Minny character in the book ' She is every Southern white woman's nightmare; I adore her '. She did shine as a great creation as indeed did Abilene.

The publisher herself was something and nothing, a total caricature of hard headed business woman who actually just came across as rude, arrogant and uncaring. One of the premises of the novel was how the white women of Jackson were all scrabbling around desparately trying to see whose chapter referred to whom and the machinations the writers go through to attempt to protect identities.

The thought did cross my mind that Kathryn Stockett has not got the same ability to obfuscate the proceedings; this is her first novel and so presumably the heartless bitch of a publisher knows exactly who she is. Equally presumably Mrs Stockett is banking on two million copies sold protecting her from the cold wind of reprisal and revenge.(less)

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Oct 11, 2009 Mocha Girl rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While I am a fan of novels with Southern settings, I opted to quickly skim this book after Chapter 1 -- a true rarity for me, especially considering that this is a Vine Voice book I am obligated to review. Perhaps my expectations were too high after reading the synopses and praises heralding it as a "lush, original" story told "through authentic voices..." I was really looking forward to reading it along with my book buddy, but unfortunately she must proceed without me.

The story's setting is 19...more While I am a fan of novels with Southern settings, I opted to quickly skim this book after Chapter 1 -- a true rarity for me, especially considering that this is a Vine Voice book I am obligated to review. Perhaps my expectations were too high after reading the synopses and praises heralding it as a "lush, original" story told "through authentic voices..." I was really looking forward to reading it along with my book buddy, but unfortunately she must proceed without me.

The story's setting is 1962 Mississippi and Aibiliene works as a domestic for white employers. Having lost her only child tragically and unexpectedly, she pours her heart into caring for her white charge (the seventeenth one) as her own. She has a sweet, non-threatening disposition and has seemingly worked diligently, obediently, without protest in the homes of some disrespectful (and I suspect) racist women -- the same women (and their children) that she knows better than they know themselves. The author coats Abiliene's diction with broken English (which is acceptable considering the region and era); but her attempt at the African American vernacular left me a bit frustrated and insulted. She uses a somewhat different choice of words using phonetically yet functionally incorrect substitutes (if there is a literary term for this, I obviously do not know what it is). It may be a nit that bothered only me, but to clarify, here's an example: Law = Lord, a course = of course, spec = expect, and doe-nob = doorknob. This "pitch perfect voice" (as described on the back flap) of the the childless, faithful, church-going, make-everything-all-right-for-the-white-folk, black maid -- was a bit too much for me in roughly ten pages. I was sorely disappointed in Aibileen's voice and her story from the onset; I lost interest immediately. I closed the book attempting to flush the stereotypical modern day "mammy" image from my mind!

While this review is obviously in the minority, I must rate it low per Amazon's scale -- I did not care for the characters (or their voices) I met and heard in Chapter 1 and could not fathom spending the time and energy reading another 400 detailed pages of it. Maybe I was not the target audience? I am not sure. I finished the book by skimming through the following chapters and sadly there was nothing that I read within the pages to make me reconsider reading the novel in greater detail. Maybe fans of Clara's Heart, The Secret Life of Bees, and other similarly themed works will enjoy this offering. While I did not care for the content and themes, I will note that mechanically the author writes well and is a good storyteller. (less)

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Nov 22, 2009 Christine E. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

I'm listening to this as an audiobook and I'm guessing I'm about halfway through, but I feel justified in giving it 4 stars. I might add or subtract a star when I'm done listening to it.

I'm glad I'm listening to this one, rather than just reading it, but I will probably buy the book too. It's written in the first-person, alternating among 3 women in early-1960's Mississippi - 2 black maids and one young white woman who has just graduated from college and is seeing the community she grew up in i...more

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Sep 15, 2008 eb rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An engrossing, vivid, funny, and important book about three women living in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s. Stockett writes in three first-person voices: 1. a middle-aged black maid who specializes in childcare, 2. a hot-tempered black maid who cares for a once-poor, now-rich white woman, and 3. a white girl who's just graduated from college and is floundering around. The Help is "about" race and feminism, but not in an earnest or heavy-handed way. Story is Stockett's first concern, and Jesus...more

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David R Hello,
I'm a senior in an AP english class and need to write an essay arguing for or against, any book written in the last 5 years,to be considered a...more
updated Apr 17, 2009 12:31am

Mary Anne David,

This is probably too late for your essay.

I grew up in the South of the 1950's. The Help is not just a novel; I feel in my heart that it is histo...more
Mar 04, 2010 05:25pm

Karen I loved this book for the same reasons and I would find myself holding my breath at times!

Even though my mom did not work, she had three kids aged 1,...more
Sep 28, 2010 10:29am

Apr 25, 2010 Thomas rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: five-stars, favorites

Originally, I thought this book should have been retitled The Hype. At least that's what I told my friend. I remember thinking something along the lines of, blah, another story about racism in the old southern days? Must be the chick-lit version of To Kill a Mockingbird. Wow. I was so wrong.

The Help details the lives of three women living in Jackson, Mississippi, right when the Civil Rights Movement began. There is Skeeter, a twenty-two-year-old aspiring writer who terribly misses her maid, Cons...more

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Jun 21, 2009 Laurel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction

This is a wonderfully written book told from the perspective of three very different (but all incredibly strong) women living in Jackson, MS at the brink of the civil rights movement.

Eugenia (known to everyone as Skeeter) is a young white woman and aspiring author who has just returned home from college. At a bridge club meeting with her now married childhood friends, she finds herself troubled to hear of one of these friend's initiative for every household to have a separate bathroom for the "...more This is a wonderfully written book told from the perspective of three very different (but all incredibly strong) women living in Jackson, MS at the brink of the civil rights movement.

Eugenia (known to everyone as Skeeter) is a young white woman and aspiring author who has just returned home from college. At a bridge club meeting with her now married childhood friends, she finds herself troubled to hear of one of these friend's initiative for every household to have a separate bathroom for the "colored" house keepers, so that whites could be better protected from the diseases some so ignorantly thought they carried. With the mild support of an editor in NY, Skeeter comes up with an idea to write a book containing interviews of the local maids (often referred to as "the help") as they describe in detail their daily lives serving white families. Skeeter slowly secures the assistance of Aibileen, who raised 17 white children throughout her life, and Aibileen's friend Minny, who keeps getting fired because she has a habit of speaking her mind.

Initially, the fear of discovery and retaliation keeps the maids from fully trusting Skeeter with their stories, even though they are promised to be kept anonymous. They (along with several others) ultimately want so deeply for their voices to be heard that they eventually agree to talk, risking their lives to do so.

I fell in love with each of these wonderfully vibrant characters and was moved by the bravery of their plight. The audio version of the book is magnificently read by 3 wonderful actresses who do an amazing job at bringing these rich characters and their stories to life.

The Help is at once charming, heart wrenching, eye-opening, funny, uplifting and empowering. It is also not without flaws, of course. Some of the characters (particularly Miss Hilly) are a bit overly stereotypical, and the ending wasn't quite as satisfying as I'd hoped. However, I felt these flaws to be minor and they did not take away from my overall enjoyment. Overall a wonderfully written, poignant first novel by an author from whom I will be anxious to read more in the future.(less)

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Dec 20, 2010 Harun Harahap rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: punya, terjemahan, fiksi

Novel ini adalah novel yang bisa membuat anda ingin terus membacanya hingga baris akhir di bab penutup. Sulit merelakan untuk meletakkan buku ini walaupun mata sudah lelah. Novel yang sangat menarik tentang kisah 'Hitam-Putih' di Mississippi pada tahun dimana Martin Luther King, Jr. berjuang untuk persamaan hak.

Kisah 'pelayan hitam' pada 'majikan putih' ini mengingatkan saya pada novel favorit saya "To Kill a Mockingbird". Kepedulian segelintir orang pada sesamanya yang berbeda warna kulit diant...more Novel ini adalah novel yang bisa membuat anda ingin terus membacanya hingga baris akhir di bab penutup. Sulit merelakan untuk meletakkan buku ini walaupun mata sudah lelah. Novel yang sangat menarik tentang kisah 'Hitam-Putih' di Mississippi pada tahun dimana Martin Luther King, Jr. berjuang untuk persamaan hak.

Kisah 'pelayan hitam' pada 'majikan putih' ini mengingatkan saya pada novel favorit saya "To Kill a Mockingbird". Kepedulian segelintir orang pada sesamanya yang berbeda warna kulit diantara sebagian besar masyarakat yang mengatakan bahwa persamaan adalah hal yang mustahil. Seorang wanita kulit putih, Miss Skeater yang pada awalnya kehilangan seorang pelayannya, Constantine memutuskan untuk menuliskan kisah "Sang Pelayan" ke masyarakat luas. Aibileen dan Minny menjadi orang-orang pertama diantara belasan pelayan lainnya yang memberiksan kisah mereka pada Miss Skeater.

Kisah dengan tiga sudut pandang ini memuat tokoh yang berkarakter kuat. Aibileen seorang wanita kulit hitam yang bijaksana dan Minny yang bermulut besar tapi baik hati menjadi perpaduan yang menarik. Ditambah lagi dengan majikan mereka yang karakternya tak kalah menarik. Nyonya muda yang dipimpin Miss Hilly menjadi peran antagonis yang membuat anda ingin mencekik lehernya. Tokoh-tokoh tersebut membuat buku ini begitu memuaskan untuk dibaca.

Tuntutan persamaan hak ini entah sampai kapan akan dituliskan baik dalam buku fiksi dan nonfiksi. Tapi yang pasti bahwa era itu telah ada dan sudah menjadi sejarah. Yang semoga saja tak akan terulang lagi. Amerika kini telah berubah, 'hitam-putih' bisa berjalan berdampingan dan makan dalam satu meja yang sama. Bahkan presiden mereka sekarang pun berkulit hitam. Walaupun rasisme masih ada tapi perjuangan tidak akan selesai sampai hak persamaan tegak di muka bumi. Tak hanya di Amerika saja tapi di seluruh dunia termasuk negara kita, Indonesia.

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."
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Dec 01, 2010 Will Byrnes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Help is a tale of lines, color, gender and class, in the Jackson, Mississippi of the early 1960s. This is a world in which black women work as domestics in white households and must endure the whims of their employers lest they find themselves jobless, or worse. It is the Jackson, Mississippi where Medgar Evers is murdered, and where spirit and hope are crushed daily. It is the Jackson, Mississippi where Freedom Riders are taken from a bus, a place where segregation and racism are core belie...more The Help is a tale of lines, color, gender and class, in the Jackson, Mississippi of the early 1960s. This is a world in which black women work as domestics in white households and must endure the whims of their employers lest they find themselves jobless, or worse. It is the Jackson, Mississippi where Medgar Evers is murdered, and where spirit and hope are crushed daily. It is the Jackson, Mississippi where Freedom Riders are taken from a bus, a place where segregation and racism are core beliefs and where challenge to the status quo is met with resistance, to the point of violence. It is a time of political turmoil on the national stage, as the civil rights movement is picking up steam. It is also a place where using the wrong bathroom could get a black person beaten to death.

The Help sees this world through three sets of eyes, Aibeleen, a fifty-something black woman who has taken care of many white children and is beginning again with a newborn. Minny, in her thirties, has troubles enough at home, with an abusive, drunken husband and several children of her own, but her inability to control her tongue has led to a series of jobs and a series of firings. Skeeter is a young white woman, newly graduated from college, and eager to pursue a career in writing. Skeeter has grown a conscience and no longer accepts the presumptions of the past. She yearns to know what happened to Constantine, the black woman who was so important to her as a child. Skeeter sees the unfairness of the social structure. She engages Aibeleen, Minny and a host of other black domestic workers to tell their stories for a book, hoping to expose the hypocrisy and cruelty of Jackson’s white society.

The story not only places the events in historical context, but offers a taste of what it must have been like for the Aibeleens, Minnys and Skeeters of the time. Stockett has created living, breathing characters, people you can relate to, cheer and cry for. If there is softness here, it is that the devils are painted in glaring red, which may be an accurate portrayal of the time, but makes for a melodramatic feel at times. The heroines are fully realized. We get a sense of how they came to be the way they are. While we are offered some background on the baddies, it is not enough to make them as completely human as the three narrators.

The Help is a powerful, moving read, blessed with a colorful, believable cast of characters, a compelling setting and an eternal message of shared humanity, a knockout of a first novel.
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Mark If there is softness here, it is that the devils are painted in glaring red, which may be an accurate portrayal of the time, but makes for a melodrama...more
May 16, 2012 02:40pm

Will Byrnes Thanks, Mark. There is indeed a wealth of petty viciousness in the world. Have you been catching recent political news here? North Carolina goes out o...more
May 16, 2012 02:49pm

Dolors The Help is a powerful, moving read, blessed with a colorful, believable cast of characters, a compelling setting and an eternal message of shared hum...more
Apr 10, 2013 12:49pm

Feb 23, 2010 Becky rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone with skin.

Shelves: historical-fiction, library, audiobook, the_south, 2010, highly-recommended, political, reviewed, tear-jerkers, to-buy, challenge-1010

I'm so, so glad that I gave this book a chance. I've had somewhat bad experience with books that have been hyped as much as this one has, and I generally try to avoid the hyped ones, but for once, finally, here is a book that lives up to the hype and more importantly, deserves it.

I don't really have words to say what I felt was great about this book without sounding cliche. This book was brilliant on so many levels, I feel like I want to start it over from the beginning and listen to it again....more

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Jul 28, 2010 Joe rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gift, mlis-book-club

I read the first paragraph of The Help, absorbing the words, but suddenly being caught off guard by the dialect. I stopped reading.

I shifted the book in my hands, flipping to the author's biography and photograph on the back of the dust jacket.

Staring up at me was this:

I'm a white person!

Oh, sweet Jesus, I thought. An affluent, white Manhattanite. Great. And one who apparently fancies herself a master at Southern Black Vernacular. Even better.

I rolled my eyes and returned to page one, fully prepared to hate ever...more

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Mar 28, 2012 Gary McTiernan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have avoided reading this for a variety of reasons but primarily because I assumed that its popularity rendered it unworthy of my attention. Forgive me for my foolish snobbery because this is an absorbing tale of bravery and self-actualization. The three memorable women who narrate this novel are as different in temperament and background as the inhabitants of Downton Abbey another story about class distinctions in an insular world about to burst apart. These three women risk everything to o...more

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Jun 29, 2010 Mia Queen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: hadiah, inspiring, bikin-sesak-nafas

Dikasih oleh sang penerjemah mbak Uci *peluk peluk mbak Uci*
Sepertinya saya memang berjodoh dengan buku ini *lebay dikit gpp ya* dari beberapa bulan yang lalu saat beberapa teman di goodreads membaca buku ini saya sudah tertarik dengan cover 3 burung ungunya itu. Saat beredar buku terjemahannya malah jadi lebih tertarik untuk baca, covernya lebih indah lagi. Gara-gara sudah jatuh cinta inilah, saya tidak berani banyak-banyak baca review, takut spoiler, hehe. Hanya saja dari gambar cover sudah te...more Dikasih oleh sang penerjemah mbak Uci *peluk peluk mbak Uci*
Sepertinya saya memang berjodoh dengan buku ini *lebay dikit gpp ya* dari beberapa bulan yang lalu saat beberapa teman di goodreads membaca buku ini saya sudah tertarik dengan cover 3 burung ungunya itu. Saat beredar buku terjemahannya malah jadi lebih tertarik untuk baca, covernya lebih indah lagi. Gara-gara sudah jatuh cinta inilah, saya tidak berani banyak-banyak baca review, takut spoiler, hehe. Hanya saja dari gambar cover sudah tersirat buku ini bernafaskan isu rasial dan dari browsing sekilas di amazon, rata-rata buku ini dapat 4-5 bintang.

Buku setebal 537 halaman ini terbagi atas 3 kisah.
Aibileen
Sepertinya setiap orang akan menyukai karakter Aibileen. Bagaimana tidak, sebagai seorang pekerja dan pengasuh anak, ia mencintai Mae Mobley seperti anaknya sendiri. Plus ia mengajarkan nilai kehidupan yang dilewatkan begitu saja oleh ibu si anak itu sendiri, miss Leefolt.

Minny
Nah, kalau ini jagoan saya :p
Dari 3 sudut pandang (Aibileen, Minny, miss Skeeter) saya paling suka dari sisi Minny. Celetukannya menyegarkan dan terkadang membuat saya tertawa. Tempramennya meledak-ledak, terlebih lagi ia bekerja di rumah miss Celia yang dongok abis, saya bayanginnya mirip Pamela Anderson gitu (yak, semuanya mirip).

Miss Skeeter, wanita kulit putih yang semakin hari semakin menyadari perbedaan dirinya dengan teman-temannya. Pintar menulis dan bertekad menjadi jurnalis. Diawali dengan kolumnis kecil yang membahas tentang bagaimana cara merawat rumah, padahal ia sama sekali tidak pernah membersihkan rumah. Sehingga ia meminta bantuan Aibileen untuk menjawab pertanyaan di koran dan menjadi dekat dengan Aibileen. Terlebih lagi ternyata Aibileen kenal dengan Constantine, pengasuh kulit hitamnya sedari kecil yang tiba-tiba menghilang dari rumah.

Seiring dengan pertemuan Aibileen dan miss Skeeter yang mulai meningkat, tens cerita mulai tambah seru. Miss Skeeter yang melihat sendiri perbedaan antara kulit putih dan kulit hitam, berpikir untuk menerbitkan buku. Bagaimana rasanya wanita warga kelas bawah bekerja dengan kulit putih? Bagaimana suara hati seseorang yang senantiasa dianggap kotor, rendah dan berbeda? Dan apa sebenarnya yang terjadi dengan Constantine? Kenapa Aibileen selalu mengelak jika ditanya mengenai Constantine?

Yak, kira-kira seperti itulah garis besar buku ini.
Kenapa 5 bintang?
Buku ini seakan memiliki jiwa, saya merasakan setiap emosi di sini. Cinta. Benci. Marah. Sakit hati. Lepas. Bebas. Bahagia. Saya ikut merasakan kedongkolan Minny saat majikannya mabuk dan melontarkan pernyataan tolol. Saat membaca dari sudut pandang Aibileen, seakan mama saya hadir kembali, karena aura keibuannya yang sangat kuat. Aibileen menjadi tokoh favorit dalam novel yang saya baca nih sepanjang tahun 2010 ini. Dan saat miss Skeeter berhasil membukukan wawancaranya, saya ikutan girang.

Covernya, me likey so much. *mbak Anne Mariane, top banget dah*
Mbak Uci, terjemahannya mantab. Sering-sering ya kirim paket ke Bali :p
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Feb 15, 2010 Alison rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone, the good people of Mississippi

Recommended to Alison by: Cindy D. and Jennifer L. and many other female friends

"Mississippi and the world is two very different places," the Deacon say and we all nod cause ain't it the truth.

Coming from anyone else, that line might offend, but coming from Kathryn Stockett, former Jackson, Mississippian herself, I have to smile. Cause ain't it the truth.

The Help is the story of a college graduate, Skeeter, coming home to Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960's after completing her degree at Ole Miss. Skeeter wants to be a writer, but is encouraged by a New York City publishing...more "Mississippi and the world is two very different places," the Deacon say and we all nod cause ain't it the truth.

Coming from anyone else, that line might offend, but coming from Kathryn Stockett, former Jackson, Mississippian herself, I have to smile. Cause ain't it the truth.

The Help is the story of a college graduate, Skeeter, coming home to Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960's after completing her degree at Ole Miss. Skeeter wants to be a writer, but is encouraged by a New York City publishing company to write about something more interesting that household cleaning tips.

Skeeter, who developed a close bond with the African Amercian maid who raised her and then inexplicably disappeared, sets out to tell the story of black maids in Mississippi, and uncovers some beautiful, multi-dimensional characters and a wealth of wisom for the reader in so-doing.

"It's true. There are some racists in this town," Miss Leefolt say. Miss Hilly nod her head, "Oh, they're out there."

Written about a time when the word racist had not even been truly defined, due to the status quo of indignities firmly implanted in the times and the culture, The Help goes back to an era when people didn't even fathom that what they were doing was actually an injustice. You'll be shocked, you'll be embarassed, but the beauty of this book is in it's final message...not that much separates us, and kindness knows no lines.

I think what I loved most about The Help (not generally known to be a sap, I cried through large parts of this book), is that it shows how even the persecuted can win just by having their own inner peace. And the ones who think they are winning, because they feel more powerful, or because they have come to manipulate other people and situations, they are actually the ones who suffer. They are the ones who, by having to live with themselves and their unending need for boundaries between people, come to exist in their own private hell. And most of the time they are completely oblivious to the fact.

Which brings to mind some words from another wisom-inspiring passage...

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. (Matthew 5:7, NIV)

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Aug 31, 2009 Lee rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, southern-lit

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'm...a little unsure what I'm saying about this one. I had heard of it--it's a best-seller, particularly sweeping in the south--but I don't think I would have picked it up if my mother hadn't been so moved as to send me a text message about it while I was at work. I wish I'd saved it, it was actually punctuated. She said that she'd gotten it from the library and was buying a copy because she felt it was such a good portrayal of what it was like to be a woman when she was growing up, that I shou...more I'm...a little unsure what I'm saying about this one. I had heard of it--it's a best-seller, particularly sweeping in the south--but I don't think I would have picked it up if my mother hadn't been so moved as to send me a text message about it while I was at work. I wish I'd saved it, it was actually punctuated. She said that she'd gotten it from the library and was buying a copy because she felt it was such a good portrayal of what it was like to be a woman when she was growing up, that I should read it to know what her world was like then, and "how far we've come."

I don't know. The premise was good. And Stockett knows how to move a plot; the thing was easy to read. But through the whole experience I couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable, and not really in the good this-is-revealing-my-biases kind of way I've gotten from books written about race relations written from the perspective of the disenfranchised. I bristled when I got to the first black maid character and saw that her chapters were in a kind of pidgen English, while Skeeter's (the white narrator) were in invisible-perspective college-educated English. Yes, Skeeter just got out of college, which could explain away her lack of accent/syntax irregularities, and isn't that convenient. (Personally, even this required suspension of my disbelief. Stockett has spent her time in the South, and yet somehow she fails to really show that even though all southern accents and ways of talking are lumped together as bumpkinish by outsiders, within the South, especially at the time period, certain southern accents were sign of wealth and distinction, and even educated southerners would not have been so quick to unlearn them.)

I was able to keep reading when I saw that, in dialogue, Stockett does let some of her white women speak "southern" as well, although the ruling tendency is to give them unremarkable English and to pepper the maid's with "be's" and "done's", even with Aibileen, the maid who writes well enough to need hardly any editing, and who reads Faulkner and Richard Wright as eagerly as a beach novel.

Then there's the fact that though this is a novel about the burgeoning civil rights movement told from "the sidelines" (in the same way that '80s career women are often seen as "the sidelines" of the more radical feminist movement), and from women. There were really no fleshed out male characters here at all, I felt them all as faceless, clueless, heavy-treading hulking presences in a scene, but certainly not distinguishable from each other as a rule. This isn't necessarily a complaint--I endure the opposite often enough, and the novel seems comfortable being a microcosm of women, like "Cranford," maybe. But...for all that room, and all that delicious novelty, and all the room for detail that kind of focus should afford Stockett, I finished the book feeling kind of let down for the female characters. They were all awkward mixes of stereotype and archetype, even the book's dearest, most compelling characters who get all the figurative "screen time" (lord, did I just write that?): the wise, loving black woman; the screechy, mad black woman; the pathetic, trashy-but-somehow-lovable Marilyn wannabe; and the painfully earnest but stupid in the ways of the world wide-eyed lady-writer-wannabe.

Really, I'm not sure I even mind that she used those tropes as characters. But I was disappointed that she didn't do anything to turn any of them on their heads, add any new nuances, challenge me in some way to see them differently. And I know, after reading the afterword (and from my common sense, yes), that Skeeter is supposed to be the one I identify with, that she is most closely the mouthpiece of the author herself, a southerner with ambiguous feelings about her family's black maid, who moved to New York to be a writer...but I found Skeeter mostly insufferable, especially when compared to Aibileen and Minny. There are a few places in the novel where her unexamined sense of privilege is gently made fun of, but those moments never go deep enough to reach anything hard or terribly unflattering about that privilege, and on the whole I felt that we were supposed to be lauding Skeeter all the way for being so big and brave as to care about the black maid's plight, if only sort of accidentally for her own gain.

The book reaches its enlightenment apex with the white woman realizing that we're all just people, regardless of skin color or, perhaps, class. Which is nice. It's a good thing to know and verbalize. And I was charmed by it, rooted for it, when that was the message of Aibileen's disguised stories meant to counteract the racism that Mae Mobley would absorb growing up. But, I was really hoping for a grown-up story.

This book won't stay with me for more than a day or so, I can already tell. Maybe the premise will. More than anything, I think I'll be wondering for a while just what these stories triggered in my mother that spurred such violent emotion and memory. That's the book I want to read.(less)

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Jan 18, 2009 Suzanne rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone!

This first novel by Kathryn Stockett is amazing. This is one of those few books that grabbed my emotions and interest so deeply that I could not stop thinking about the book when I would set it down to attend to other activities (like eating, sleeping & working!). I was engrossed and couldn't wait to read more, while at the same time savoring every chapter as the story developed.

Stockett makes the characters come to life with her scene and character descriptions; writing in the 'voices' of...more

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