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.
Every so often a special book comes along. A book that meets all of your wildest expectations. A book you want to spend every waking second with and one that you will sacrifice sleep for. A book that makes you laugh, cry, and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. A book that is deep, thought-provoking, but that still knows how to have a good time. You know that this relationship will be a whirlwind and that it will have to come to an end, but the end will be bittersweet and leave you wanting more.
The Help is that book.
I am going to join in with the rest of the free world and start shouting my praises for this book. I am a little behind on this bandwagon (waited until the movie was out before I read the book – gasp!) but I am so glad I jumped on. The characters are rich, dynamic, believable, some lovable, others love-to-hate-able. A book of social inequality, irony, love, humor, courage, fear, sweet revenge and life. I loved it. I loved every.single.page. Stop reading this and go get The Help right now! (ok wait, finish the blog first… and maybe comment, THEN go read The Help!)
And sometimes, after that special book has come into your life, a special movie follows. A movie that actually comes close to living up to its printed predecessor. A movie that makes you laugh, cry, and feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but still leaves you with a righteous anger. One that is thought-provoking, but still knows how to have a good time.
The Help is that movie!!
See trailer here!
I saw The Help yesterday and loved it, but not quite as much as the book. There was just too much in that book to jam into a movie and the movie did a very respectable job at almost living up to the book. It was 100% worth seeing. The set, wardrobes, and hair on their own make it worthwhile to see, but then you add in an all-star cast! The actors in this film took on their roles with a sense of responsibility to the book and it showed. It was phenomenal and I would see it again. Ok – now you are free to run off to the bookstore and the movie theater (in that order, you are not allowed to see this movie before reading the book!)
Anyone out there already read it/seen it? What did you think?
