Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Audio Book Review of The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Read For: Mount TBR & Reading Across the States
 
Synopsis: "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 seventeenth 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. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't."



My Review: I see now why so many people were raving about this book for the past few years. I am glad I finally got a chance to read it (or rather listen to it). The audio version is fantastic with several narrators for the different voices of the book, they worked brilliantly together and I feel I don't even need to see the movie (but am looking forward to it). I greatly enjoyed the concept of the book and how it was executed. It was enjoyable, yet eye opening. I must say though the ending really left you hanging without any true conclusion, some of the storylines are left a little open to interpretation.
 
My Rating: I really don't see how I could ever give this book a rating less than Four Paws and a Stump Wag!

2 comments:

  1. I liked this one but I wasn't blown away by it. Like you said, It was too open ended and nothing really changed for anyone.

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    1. I agree, nothing really did change much for anyone, except Skeeter, you did get a little touch of change happening with the other maids but not the ones featured. I just don't think she could really make a happy ending for everyone and keep it realistic.

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