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The Help |  | Author: Kathryn Stockett
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99 (8.29EUR)
Buy New: £3.99 (4.14EUR)
as of 8/9/2010 14:04 IST details
You Save: £4.00 (4.15EUR) (50%)
New (29) Used (8) from £3.19 (3.31EUR)
Seller: Amazon.co.uk
Rating:  236 reviews
Sales Rank: 10
Media: Paperback
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0141039280
EAN: 9780141039282
ASIN: 0141039280
Publication Date: May 13, 2010
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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Product Description
It's Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Miss Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell...
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 236
An unexpected delight September 7, 2010
CeliaV
I brought this book based on the other great reviews and I wasn't disappointed. This novel is like nothing I've ever read before and I enjoyed it immensely. The characters are vibrant, real and colourful and their personalities leap off the page. The plot was unusual and absorbing and went along at the perfect pace. By turn moving, funny, thought-provoking and heart-warming, I read this book in great big chunks and finished it in record time! I even spent a whole day indoors reading this because I couldn't put it down. Highly recommended.
Brilliant! September 6, 2010
Sheroot
Amazing book which really draws you into the characters and atmosphere of the Deep South - I couldn't put it down and like many others felt sad when I had finished the book and had to say goodbye to the characters. Read it as soon as possible but be prepared to have to cancel other events so that you can carry on reading! Would make a great holiday read.
Exceeded Expectations September 4, 2010
nmyks
I bought this book as an afterthought when placing an order for my holiday reads. I didn't think that the theme of the book was one that would instantly grab me and I had no expectations, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The story was thoroughly engaging from the outset; very well written with engaging characters. I ploughed through it and although it was a light read, the issues it addressed clearly weren't. I highly recommend this book.
 Excellent September 4, 2010
Avid reader
Much better than I expected, I bought it because of the reviews and it stands up very well. Amazing insight into how things were in the Southern States and not all that long ago. Hard to believe that it was the sixties and not earlier.
The characters are engaging and you just know that you want one of them in particular to get their come uppance!!!!!!!
 Black Maids Speak---and it's GOOD! September 3, 2010
Jay Gilbertson (Prairie Farm, WI USA)
The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
Book Review by Jay Gilbertson
Though this novel has soared up every chart, what drew me in and kept me reading was author Stockett's risky writing technique. Using first person, (meaning the reader is seeing the world from one perspective) the novel is told through the eyes of three very different women. The tale opens in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi and if you haven't figured it out yet, the main theme concerns the domestic help--the maids.
Two out of the three characters saved this work from completely tanking; Aibileen and Minny. Though heavy on the caricature side, their voices and concerns and harsh realities were the thunder in this perfect storm of racial tension about to rip open. As the maids rub and scrub the homes of the privileged white women, they also care for their children. What's significant is the nature of these exploited maids in that they choose to love and care for them as if they were their own.
The opening:
"Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning..."
The interaction of the `maid-network' and how they manage to find some crumbs of pride and wring a few drops of happiness out of a really rotten situation should have been the theme. Should have.
Enter Eugenia Phelan or Skeeter as everyone but her mother calls her. A college graduate with all the trimmings of a rich southern girl--minus one--no man in sight. Here is where The Help morphed into cliché-ville . Since Skeeter can't seem to attract the proper blood-line in accordance to her mother's long list of family- tie-must-haves, she realizes her only escape from the plantation is to land a book deal. She sets out to interview (steal) as many of the maid's tales of what really went on during their day. Some of the stories are brutal and filled me with shame, while a few others offered a big helping of my favorite dish; hope. That is the road this book should have taken.
In the end, Skeeter's book is a big success and off to New York, contract in hand, she goes. As for the other two women, it's not so clear. Then I learned exactly why the author was so intent on having Skeeter presented as a sugar-coated-helpful-white-lady. After the novel ends, the author had added: `Kathryn Stockett, in her own words.' Basically, Stockett limply confesses her guilt for never having asked her very own family maid this one question: What did it feel like to be black in Mississippi, working for her white family?
I would imagine she already knew...
Showing reviews 1-5 of 236
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