Author: Kathryn Stockett
Published: February 2009
(If there are many typos, sorry! My "h" key still isn't working well and I get a bit frustrated with typing sometimes, and then I'm not as careful with my proofing!)
Book Jacket Synopsis:
"Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may ave 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 raiing er seventeenth white child. Someting has shifted insider her after the loss of her own son, who died while is bosses looked the oter way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both teir hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and prehaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind er tongtue, so she's lost yet another job. Minni finally finds a position working for someone too new to town..."
My review:
I really enjoyed this book! The main characters were very well written and engaging. The book takes place in 1960's Mississippi (The Jackson area, if I remember correctly) in a time when integration is supposed to be beginning, but the south - Mississippi especially - is resisting. It was a time when being an integrationist in that area was dangerous. The author does a great job of giving the reader a look into this intense place and time. I was constantly engaged in the story. The structure of the story is such that you jump from character to character - a few chapters from Aibileen's point of view, a few from Skeeter's, a few from Minny, and then back to Aibileen, and so on. Sometime's this type of structure annoys me, but in this book it did not. My only complaint is one that I often have of books like this (more intellectual books I guess you could say - typical book club books). The end did not have quite as much resolution as I would have liked. I don't really enjoy it when authors leave what happens next to the reader's imagination. I enjoy a good epilog :) lol There wasn't a ton left up in the air, but enough that I wished for a little bit more!
Since I'm trying to do this review without spoiling any of the story for anybody who hasn't read it, that's about all I can say for now!!
My rating: I give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars
Do I recommend it: Definitely! I recommend it for individual reading, but I also think it would be a great book club book.
requested this from the library. Seems like there is a similar one, but not sure what it's called. Nannies or something. Then again, could be this book, I rarely get a chance to write the book names down when I hear about them.
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