This has been one of the things I've always wanted to do. So I was super excited when my friend Wendy invited me to join her new book group. I feel like a super cool adult whenever I mention my bookclub. Like I'm a member of some secret society. And for me, it is. It's been something I've always thought would be so neat and now that I have the opportunity to be a part of one....I'm giddy with glee. So thank you Wendy-- for thinking of me :)
The recent book we read was called "The Help", by Kathryn Stockett. I really enjoyed the book and it gave such a new perspective for me that I appreciate.
The book was written about the invisible social lines that were drawn between white people and colored people in the south in the 60's. Specifically the colored maids (the 'help') and the white women who employed them.
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.
I really recommend this book to anyone who is looking for something to read.
