The Help~Book Review

 

Not long ago I kept hearing about this book The Help. It seemed on many of the blogs and message boards I read this book was being mentioned. I decided I need to pick it up myself and read it.  I am so glad I did! This book was excellent! It is one of the best books I have read in a long time! It is set at the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1960's.  It is the story of black maids working for white families in Jackson Mississippi during that time. It is narrated by mainly by two of the black maids Aibileen and Minny and Miss Skeeter a young white woman who has just returned  from college to find her beloved maid Constantine suddenly gone from the family after working for them for many, many years.

Miss Skeeter becomes sympathetic to the plight of the maids and how they are treated by the white women they work for. Miss Skeeter  wants to become a writer and decides secretly that she to write about the maids everyday lives,  their views of the white women that they work for and the injustice, abuse and heartbreak they suffer while working for these families. The story is compelling and takes you in. I fell in love with the characters and felt as if I knew them. 

You get a feeling of just how frightened these women were during this tumultuous time.  How they feared for themselves and their families simply because they were black. The injustices they suffered because of the color of their skin. You get a real feel for what segregation feels like. How the black families could not shop at the same grocery store as the white families unless the maids were shopping for the households for whom they worked. How they could not swim in the same pool or ride in the front of the bus or get ice cream from the same window as white families. These women were made to use toilets that were separate from the main house toilets, many times the toilets were outside and had to be used regardless of the weather and yet these maids  were entrusted with the care and raising of the children of the white families as well as the responsibilities of practically running and maintaining the households for very little pay.

You could see how much the black maids came to rely on the white families for their livelihood and how word of mouth could ruin any job you may have had in the future if a particular white woman decided they did not like you regardless of the excellent job you did. 

For me personally it bought back memories of my childhood. The story takes place in 1962 the year I was born, and while I did not grow up in Mississippi or anywhere near the south, the setting and references in the story remind me of my childhood.

The Help is a book that will stay with me for quite awhile. I loved the characters and just did not want the story to end.