I finished reading this book the other day and was actually disappointed that it ended. I laughed and cheered out loud. What an amazing read!! The book grabbed you from the first page and you find yourself move smoothly through the entire book.
The novel is told from the perspective of three characters: Aibileen Clark, a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson, an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help."
It is written with a wonderfully humorous flair. You'll spend half the book wondering what the "Terrible Awful" is and you will laugh so hard when you finally find out what it is. The Help touches on the civil rights movement of the 1960s from the perspective of three different women in Mississippi, the center of racial division in the country. The author speaks through these women with surprising perceptiveness and understanding of her subject matter. You find out at the end of the book that she grew up in the area she writes about with a black maid as part of her daily life. Highly recommend! Well worth the read!
