THE HELP
by Kathryn Stockett
- New
- Hardcover
- Condition
- New/New
- ISBN 10
- 0399155341
- ISBN 13
- 9780399155345
- Seller
-
Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid, Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her 17th white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another.
Synopsis
The Help is a 2009 novel by American author Kathryn Stockett. It is about African American maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s. The novel is told from the perspective of three characters.
Reviews
Very rarely do I read a book straight through. Usually, I have two to six going at once. Not this time. I read the entire book in two days.Although I was born roughly in the middle of this narrative, the world described had mercifully disappeared by the time I became aware of the world around me. From the very beginning, I was astounded by the stupidity and pointlessness of many of the "taboos" believed in by the employers. These taboos not only covered the "help", but also constrained the women themselves in virtually all aspects of their lives. A person's qualifications and achievements seemed to be secondary to where they came from or what social group they were part of. I came away with a sense of both how far we have come and how some prejudices are still hiding even inside those of us who feel enlightened.
Wow, what a book. I am from the south, and I was 10 years old in 1963. I remember the Sears where my mother worked having a Colored and White Bathroom and a Colored and White water fountain. I remember the outside door at the theater that said colored and led to the balcony and our delight when they finally opened it up to everyone and us teenagers could sneak up there.I was not one of the kids that had a full time maid or nanny that raised them, but I had friends that did. What thi ...more Wow, what a book. I am from the south, and I was 10 years old in 1963. I remember the Sears where my mother worked having a Colored and White Bathroom and a Colored and White water fountain. I remember the outside door at the theater that said colored and led to the balcony and our delight when they finally opened it up to everyone and us teenagers could sneak up there.I was not one of the kids that had a full time maid or nanny that raised them, but I had friends that did. What this book did for me is fill in the gaps that I never knew. I saw what was going on, I heard it, but I never really understood it, and my parents were more like Skeeter, people were just people. Yes, we had a housekeeper that came once a week because my mother had to work full time. She cleaned our house, ate at our table, cooked our dinner that night, and we visited her family at the holidays and took them a turkey at thanksgiving and wrapped presents at Christmas.But I wonder now what else we did that I was not aware of. How did we treat her and others that was considered "normal" then? Were we guilty of the prejudice and segregation-ism that is portrayed in this book? I have to say probably because we were a product of our time. I can only say that I am no longer that product. Everyone should read this book. Everyone. It is so true, correct and real it could have been my town or any town in the south in 1963.
In 2010 I decided to start reading a lot more- I set my yearly goal at 30 books and I have already hit 30!!!-this is an acomplishment for me working full time--"The Help" has been my favorite book so far this year--and has me thinking of the civil rights era so I have been trying to read other books based on that subject.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Janson Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- M0006150100000001
- Title
- THE HELP
- Author
- Kathryn Stockett
- Format/Binding
- New
- Book Condition
- New New
- Jacket Condition
- New
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0399155341
- ISBN 13
- 9780399155345
- Publisher
- Amy Einhorn Books/putnam
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2009-02
Terms of Sale
Janson Books
About the Seller
Janson Books
About Janson Books
Glossary
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- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...