This summary provides an overview of the book "The Help" in 3 sentences: The book tells the story of three women - Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny - living in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, where racial tensions are high. Skeeter has just graduated from college and wants to write an anonymous book featuring the stories of black maids. The maids agree to share their experiences, despite the risks, in order to challenge the racial injustices they face on a daily basis.

1. The Help online pdf
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Overview
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

2. 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.
Reviews
Here is an illustrative tale of what it was like to be a black maid during the civil
rights movement of the 1960s in racially conflicted Mississippi. There is such deep
history in the black/white relationship and this story beautifully shows the complex
spectrum, not only the hate, abuse, mistrust, but the love, attachment,
dependence.
Stockett includes this quote by Howell Raines in her personal except at the end of
the novel: There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of
affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of
segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every
emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two
people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism. An eloquent way to describe
Stockett's intentions for this novel. I know most reviews will probably focus on the
racial relationships in the book, but to me the most haunting statement was that
when you are paying someone to care for you and their livelihood depends on
making you happy, you can't expect an honest relationship.

3. I did not expect this book to hit so close to home. After all, I did not grow up in
the South and completely missed the racial mind shift in the country. But the book
isn't just about racism and civil rights. It's about the employer relationship too.
And I did grow up in South America with a maid trying to keep herself out of
poverty by making our crazy family happy. As much as we loved her, I can see so
many of the pitfalls from these complex relationships in my own history. I know
our maid was stuck between pleasing my mother and raising us the way she
believed appropriate. I know it was physically hard to work from sunup to late
everyday and emotionally hard to never relax because she wasn't the decision
maker of our home and at any moment she could be reprimanded for making the
wrong decision. She had absolutely no power, and yet she was all powerful to
shape and mold us.
I needed her, felt bad for how much I imposed upon her, but I never voiced how
much I appreciated or loved her. I took her for granted. Even though she was paid
to love us, I know she did. We were her children, especially my youngest brothers.
And yet when she moved back home, we lost contact. Was it out of laziness of our
own narcissistic lives or was the complexity of our relationship so draining she cut
the tie? It is my fear that she thinks we did not return her affection and only
thought of her as the maid. I often think about her, we all reminisce about her
wondering where she is, and more than anything, I just want to know that she is
happy and tell her thank you. It is so strange that someone who is such a vital
part of your childhood can just vanish out of your life. "They say its like true love,
good help. You only get one in a lifetime." I know. Believe me, I know.
The story is strong and real and touched something deep inside me. I could so
relate to the motherly love from Constantine to Skeeter, see that pain in the
triangle between Aibileen and Mae Mobley and Elizabeth, feel the exasperation of
Minny toward Celia, and understand the complexity of the good and bad, the love
and hate, the fear and security. Stockett captured all these emotions.
I also loved the writing style. When style compliments plot, I get giddy. I don't
always love grammatically incorrect prose or books about an author trying to be
published, but here it works because it's honest. The novel is about a white
woman secretly compiling true accounts of black maids--and the novel is in
essence a white author trying to understand black maids. The styles parallel each

4. other as do the messages. The point of Skeeter's novel is to make people see that
people are just people no matter the color of their skin and Stockett's novel
beautifully portrays that with both good and bad on both sides. The fictional novel
cover is decorated with the white dove of love and understanding. To get us there,
Stockett gives us three ordinary birds, a picture of ordinary life asking to be
accepted for its honest simplicity.
This book is Stockett's masterpiece, that story in her that was just itching to get
out. From the first page, the voice of the characters took vivid form and became
real, breathing people. I loved Aibileen, but think I loved Minny's voice more
because she is such a strong character. Besides the maids, I loved Hilly as a
portrayal of the white Southern belle with the ingrained belief that black people
are not as good as whites, verbalized as "separate but equal" so it doesn't sound
racist. My favorite scene was when Hilly says they have to be careful of racists
because they are out there. She's a bit over the top, but if you've been to the
South, not that far of a stretch. I just would have liked to find some redeeming
qualities in her from Skeeter's perspective.
While there are some instances where I felt Stockett was squeezing historical facts
into the novel, forming the plot around these events instead of letting them play
backdrop, and occasionally I could read the modern woman in this tale pushing
her message too hard, Stockett's sincerity to understand and appreciate shines
through. She lived this book to some extent and the story is a part of her. Because
it's important to her it becomes important to me.
One of my co-workers, a guy who isn’t much of a reader, borrowed The Help from
the library based on his English professor’s recommendation. The guy just couldn’t
stop talking about the story, so I decided to borrow the audio book. It’s not very
often I get to discuss books with people in real life and I wasn’t going to let this
opportunity slip by. Audio books are good for me. I was so engrossed in the story
and characters that I drove the speed limit on the highway and took the scenic
route while running errands. Sometimes I went out at lunch and needlessly drove
in circles, or sat in the parking lot at work, waiting for a good place to stop.
It is 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi. Twenty-two year-old Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan
has returned home after graduating college to find that Constantine, her family’s
maid and the woman who raised her, has mysteriously disappeared. Aibileen is a
black maid in her 50’s who works for the Leefolt family and cares deeply for their

5. daughter, Mae Mobley. She is still grieving for her young son, who died in a
workplace accident. Minny is Aibileen’s closest friend and a wonderful cook, but
her mouth keeps getting her into trouble and no one wants to hire her, until
Aibileen helps secure her a position with Celia Foote, a young woman who is new
in town and unaware of Minny’s reputation.
The story jumps back and forth between the three characters, all of them
providing their version of life in the South, the dinner parties, the fund-raising
events, the social and racial boundaries, family relationships, friendships, working
relationships, poverty, hardship, violence, and fear. Skeeter’s mother wants her to
find a nice man and get married, but she’s more interested in changing the world.
Her plans to anonymously compile a candid collection of stories about the maids’
jobs and the people they work for will risk her social standing in town, her
friendships, and the lives of the maids who tell their stories.
I loved this story! The characters really came alive for me, and the author did a
good job acknowledging actual historical events which lent richness and
authenticity to the story. I laughed and cried, felt despair and hope. This is an
important story that is a painful reminder of past cruelty and injustice. It shows
how far we have progressed and how much more we still have to accomplish.
This book has a kazillion ratings and reviews so I doubt there is little I can add. I
found the story and dialog to be quite believable. As someone who came of age
during the sixties I well remember the battles, both physical and verbal, between
the “separate-but-equal” crowd and those pushing hard for civil rights. We lived in
a suburb of Philadelphia and my mother had a lady come in once a week to do the
cleaning. I happened to be home from school one day - it must have been a
holiday or something - and at lunch I took my bowl of soup and crackers into the
dining room with my book (reading, not TV, is the foundation of anti-social
behavior) while my mother and the cleaning lady (it still is irksome to use that
term) ate in the kitchen. My mother later told me the lady said it was the first time
she had ever sat at the same table to eat something with a white woman. (My
mother had issues of her own, but they had more to do with educational elitism
than race per se, witness her early antipathy to our adoption of several mixed-
race children whom she perceived to be a less than stellar intellect. This was in the
early seventies when cross-racial adoption was still a rarity.)

6. Much as I despise religion, I have to give it credit for providing the impetus (at
least in the north, but also in some churches in the south) for the civil rights
movement. It was distinctly a religious crusade, fostered by the National of Islam
under Elijah Mohammed (the so-called Black Muslims,) some Catholic priests like
the Berrigans (much to the dismay of their bishops) and many Protestant
ministers. Bombings of churches could only lend more credibility to the marchers.
I was attending a Quaker school and remember hearing stories about one family in
the Meeting that adamantly refused to permit letting blacks into the Meeting. This
was in the fifties. Since Quakers have to do everything by consensus, they could
essential block black membership. The issue remained unresolved until the family
saw the proverbial handwriting on the wall and moved away.
I read many of the reviews and comments on Amazon and was struck by a couple
who thought the book demeaned black maids. I found just the contrary, that if any
group was degraded, it was the clique of white girls who, with only a few
exceptions, didn’t do anything of worth and cared mostly for clothes, boyfriends,
and whether a black ass had sat on their white toilet seat. Some African American
readers felt the black maids were demeaned by the book. I find many of these
comments quite interesting because I don't think the book is about black maids at
all. I think it's about a vapid white culture that is concerned with appearances and
boys, and make-up and whether their precious behinds will be soiled by sitting on
a toilet that might have been used by a black person. For me, the book ridiculed
that white culture and showed how one person made an attempt to cross over and
understand the other culture's point of view, but it remains the perception of the
white culture at the time so by necessity, the view of black dialect and actions
must be a flawed one.
I loved the scene where Abilene is trying to potty-train Mae Mobley and is in a
quandary because the child needs to see how adults do it, yet Abilene is terrified
to use the bathroom in the white house rather than the colored one built for her in
the garage. So she shows her the colored one which Mae Mobley Leefolt then
wants to use all the time, to her white mother’s horror.
Yes, there are some anachronistic events, yes, the dialect seems forced
sometimes. So what. Outstanding book that reveals the tensions of being black

7. and a decadent and dying white culture in the United States during a period of
cultural upheaval.
I don't know what I can add to what already has been said because so many
people have read this book already. And yes I'll admit that I read it because I
wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I couldn't believe how enthralled in the
book I was. I didn't read it fast, though I was pretty much hooked after the first
chapter about Aibileen. I could just feel the south just oozing out of her words,
and you can't really get more south than Mississippi.
The Help stays pretty air-tight to what was going on in Jackson, Mississippi at the
time (i.e. Medgar Ever's assassination was put in and Kennedy's). The characters
are so well drawn out that I would have no trouble believing they were real. Even
the secondary characters are not left in the dust.
In the beginning the reader is kind of eased into what will be going on. The plot
isn't completely clear until further in. And once that gets going things start to get
more complex. They weren't even simple to begin with but as I kept reading I saw
how fragile that safety line was. And Aibileen, Skeeter, and Minny were all crossing
that fragile line that was separating whites and blacks.
What really else can I say? I felt the book more than anything. I felt the fear, the
anger, the love, and the sadness. And more than any of the characters, I could
feel for Aibileen. Her love for Mea was both heartwarming and heartbreaking. She
is a character I will not soon forget and hope I never do.
When I first finished this book I had mixed feelings. I'm one of those that like a
nice neat bow tied at the end of a story. This book didn't end that way. But just
because I want it to end in a nice bow doesn't mean it should. It ended kind of like
a new beginning which I could live with.
This is a wonderfully written book told from the perspective of three very different
(but all incredibly strong) women living in Jackson, MS at the brink of the civil
rights movement.

8. Eugenia (known to everyone as Skeeter) is a young white woman and aspiring
author who has just returned home from college. At a bridge club meeting with
her now married childhood friends, she finds herself troubled to hear of one of
these friend's initiative for every household to have a separate bathroom for the
"colored" house keepers, so that whites could be better protected from the
diseases some so ignorantly thought they carried. With the mild support of an
editor in NY, Skeeter comes up with an idea to write a book containing interviews
of the local maids (often referred to as "the help") as they describe in detail their
daily lives serving white families. Skeeter slowly secures the assistance of Aibileen,
who raised 17 white children throughout her life, and Aibileen's friend Minny, who
keeps getting fired because she has a habit of speaking her mind.
Initially, the fear of discovery and retaliation keeps the maids from fully trusting
Skeeter with their stories, even though they are promised to be kept anonymous.
They (along with several others) ultimately want so deeply for their voices to be
heard that they eventually agree to talk, risking their lives to do so.
I fell in love with each of these wonderfully vibrant characters and was moved by
the bravery of their plight. The audio version of the book is magnificently read by
3 wonderful actresses who do an amazing job at bringing these rich characters and
their stories to life.
The Help is at once charming, heart wrenching, eye-opening, funny, uplifting and
empowering. It is also not without flaws, of course. Some of the characters
(particularly Miss Hilly) are a bit overly stereotypical, and the ending wasn't quite
as satisfying as I'd hoped. However, I felt these flaws to be minor and they did not
take away from my overall enjoyment. Overall a wonderfully written, poignant first
novel by an author from whom I will be anxious to read more in the future.
To download now please click the link below.
http://amzn.to/ZJKiK3