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I just finished Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel, THE HELP (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam). Before I begin to review it, let me give you the description.

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.

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.

I loved this book! I loved it so much that even when I had a million things to do (errands to run, work to complete) I couldn’t let it out of my grasp. THE HELP is one of those rare books that is both wildly entertaining and extremely thought-provoking. One of the many glowing reviews of this title came from an unlikely source, The Daily Beast’s William Boot, who tackles the bestseller list titles and lets you know if you should read the books that are flying off the bookstore shelves. He, too, loved this book. He made one criticism that I wanted to expand on. Boot wrote,

“Skeeter records the stories, but Stockett never shares them with us, a whopping omission. It is an unusual thing when the book you’re holding doesn’t measure up to the one main character is writing.”

I whole-heartedly disagree with this criticism. The book that Skeeter is writing is, in fact, Stockett’s novel. The maids stories are explored fully in this book as well as Skeeter’s own life as an independent woman trapped in a confining time period, desperately trying to break free. I recommend this book to everyone! I can’t wait to find out what is next for this extraordinary author. I am also very impressed with Amy Einhorn’s ability to spot such a wonderful literary gem!