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What Members Thought
I went into this book a bit skeptical. A young, white woman writing about the experiences of two black women in MS in 1963 just did not seem like it'd come out without being... offensive? trite? "The Help" is none of those things. Stockett deftly avoids making the South a caricature of itself.
Almost immediately I found myself pulling for all the characters. Even while my rational brain said "no way, no WAY this could've happened it's too easy, to quick" my emotional brain was right there in Ske ...more
Almost immediately I found myself pulling for all the characters. Even while my rational brain said "no way, no WAY this could've happened it's too easy, to quick" my emotional brain was right there in Ske ...more
This was a wonderful, compelling story and the audiobook version of it was just fantastic. The book focuses on three women in Jackson, Mississippi in the 60s -- a young white woman who is an aspiring writer, and two black maids whom she befriends while working on a project. The story is told in alternating chapters, switching narration between the three women. The story itself was excellent -- I hated arriving at my destination and having to stop the story. While it's fiction, there was a lot of
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This book tells the story of a few different women living in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. One woman is a white woman, Skeeter, who dreams of being a writer. The other two women (Aibileen and Minny) are black women who work in the homes of white women. Skeeter comes up with an idea to write down the stories of Minny, Aibileen and other black maids in Jackson while exploring the mystery of what happened to the maid that raised her and suddenly disappeared. This is really a story about being able to
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Such a special book, for so many reasons. I didn't expect to be so wrapped up in it, but I liked the characters so much that I read the book at every spare moment from the 22nd through Christmas Eve.
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The experience of reading this was so intense I was almost glad when I finished, so I could breathe, even though I really loved it. It's about black maids in Mississippi in the early 60s (right at the same time as Mad Men, for a contemporary look at a completely different America). A white author writing in the voice of black characters always makes me leery, and I think the answer to how well she pulled it off is complicated, but the characters were so vibrant, the claustrophobic, menacing atm
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The following words are 100% what I felt reading while this: “The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a story that made me weep as I rejoiced for each of humanity’s small but steady triumphs over hate and fear. I will never forget this wonderful book.” — Dorothea Benton Frank
Surprisingly gripping.
May 03, 2010
June
marked it as to-read
Oct 25, 2010
Jeanne
marked it as to-read
Jan 22, 2011
Ayla
marked it as to-read
Apr 21, 2011
Jess
marked it as to-read
