The Help by Kathryn Stockett - Audiobook Review

After I finished this book, I literally recommended it to 20 of my friends on Goodreads. I would have done more, but I didn't want to seem annoying.

I saw the movie first.

And I wish that I hadn't.

For me, I couldn't have read this book in any other format other than audiobook. And believe me, I've tried. While my goodreads doesn't say it, I've tried to read this book at least three different times (because this was before I even knew about goodreads) and couldn't make it past the first chapter.

I just couldn't read in the dialect. My brain kept correcting every word on the page, even when I didn't want it to.

Throughout the book, I didn't understand how special this book was. At the end, in those last two chapters, I did. And I don't think I will ever be able to make myself watch the movie again. (Not that I've even seen it since it came out on DVD.)

This book was just done so beautifully, and Stockett filled it with little nuggets of wisdom about living with others

Kindness don't have no boundaries.

and about perspective

I wonder what Miss Skeeter would do if she were here, and it kinda makes me sad. I know ain't nobody in town gonna sign a book for her and tell her she brave.

and moving on.

You done burn every bridge there is . . . so don't walk your white butt to New York, run it.

I honestly couldn't be happier that I had to read this for my Modern Literature class at school, and that it was the last book that I read in high school.

If I hadn't had to read this for school, I never would have.

My mom even listened to some of the audiobook with me in the car (because she was upset about missing out on this experience) and laughed alongside me. It was a wonderful moment, even if we did almost crash because of Minny talking about the terrible awful.

The narrators of this audiobook are literally the best. If you are in the same boat with me: if reading a physical book written in a southern dialect is just never going to happen, pick up a copy of the audiobook from your library. It's as easy as pie.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Published: 1 Jan 2009 by Scholastic, Inc.
Format - Hours: e-Audiobook - 18 hours and 19 minutes
Source: Library
Genre: Historical Fiction
Goodreads
Physical Book - Amazon, Kindle, Barnes and Noble

Audiobook - Audible
My Goodreads Rating

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.