All The Help You Need

The Help will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD December 6, 2011.

 
In honor of The Help finally making it from a best selling novel to the big screen, I'm re"printing" my first book review ever. For a review on the movie check out Rotten Tomatoes!

My review was published in Southern Maryland Women Magazine in April/May of 2010. By then The Help was already on the New York Times best sellers list for 44 weeks with four of those weeks at number one.

Enjoy!

  

The Help

Kathryn Stockett

Amy Einhorn Books/ Putnam, 464 pg.

Hardcover $24.95

By: Grace Jones

Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is twenty-three, a college graduate, tall, gangly and single. In essence, she is her mother’s worst nightmare. Driven by the mysterious dismissal of her childhood maid, Constantine, she embarks on a project that will change not only herself but everyone who reads it.

Abileen Clark is steadfast, wise, and a black maid. She has raised seventeen white children. Mae Mobley will be her last. She knows she loves that child, just as she knows it’ll eventually break both their hearts.

The Help published February 10, 2009.

Minny is short, loud and sassy. She can cook and keep house like no other, but she can’t control her temper, and that’s no good when you’re a black maid in Mississippi. After several dismissals she finds herself employed for a wealthy white-trash woman with secrets of her own.

Seemingly different, these three women will come together to write a book that will cross racial lines and set fire to southern social norms. 

Stockett’s main characters are endearing. You hope, cry, laugh, and fear for them. Abileen, Skeeter, and Minny each take turns narrating. The effect is a whirlwind of optimism and despair.  Stockett’s story is much like the southern dialect that it’s written in, coated in sugar, laced with irony and tainted with a little bit of malice. The tone is remarkably upbeat for such a depressing theme. The result is an uplifting and soul searching tale. In the end you applaud for Minny, pray for Abileen, and cheer for Skeeter. These three women will take you on a remarkable journey through race torn Jackson, Mississippi and leave you wanting more.

First published in February of 2009 it spent forty-four weeks on the New York Times best sellers list, and 4 weeks at number 1. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.