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.

The Book of the Year!  

An amazing look into the lives of the women that raised generations of their white employers' babies. You don't want to put it down. Aibileen's story makes you want to hear more stories about the era, the people and the morals of the society she lived in. A must-read.

People I Know  

The Help is a beautiful story of women I know. I have lived in a small southern town all of my life and I can only say that these women still exist.

Not only was The Help a trip down memory lane, it was a shock to realize that these lines kept women from sharing the simple comfort of talking with each other. The lines were drawn based simply on race and nothing more.

This is a wonderful book that made me ask, "What would life have been like if the lines were different?"

drivel  

The only thing the book has going for it is plot momentum, but even there, as other reviewers have noted, several plot developments strain credulity. The "dialect", again as other reviewers have commented, is inconsistent and inaccurate. The characters are cardboard, each one animating a different stereotype. That said, the hapless white cracker and her husband are amusing. A better writer might have been able to develop the genuine issue at the heart of the book - the twisted and complicated relationships between white women and the black women who toil for them and their families.

heavyhanded  

The Help, although a good read, seemed heavy-handed in its morality, thick with forshadowing and stereotype, and neatly buttoned up at the end. It's interesting enough to finish, but not nearly interesting enough to recommend.