Need Help?

Do you aim for social justice? Love stories where bad things happen to bad people? Do you feel we would all get along just fine if people simply helped their neighbors cook for their hubbies?

This post will tell you why "The Help" by Catherine Stock is THE perfect book to take to a desert island.

Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is an aspiring young author who makes a living as a columnist in a women's magazine. Trying to convince a famous publisher to publish her debut novel, she struggles to find a suitable topic, and a major part of “The Help” takes its readers through the process of Skeeter’s search for her the story she has to tell the world.  
Aibileen Clark is a maid who also cares for children in the early 1960s in the racially prejudiced southern USA. Aibileen empowers neglected children to know that they are kind, smart and important so that these young souls can walk tall. Nevertheless, they tend to see her as an inferior unprivileged black woman, since, despite all of her efforts, their families and schools have more effect than the “dirty black nanny”.  
Cilia Kivel feels like a woman who failed to please her husband by not being able to maintain a pregnancy and cook. She secretly hires Minny Jackson to help her to deal with her depression and unsuccessful kitchen adventures.

How do all these stories fit together? Why did Constantin, Skeeter's beloved nanny, leave her? And why did the whole town have scattered commodes all over Hilly Holbrook’s backyard? You will find out everything when you read the book.

"The Help" is also a movie which was adapted from the novel, and was directed by Chris Columbus, Michael Barnathan, and Brunson Green. Personally I was disappointed with the movie, because of the significant changes made to the plot of the book. The most important aspect in the plot, in my opinion, is young Mae Mobly’s discovery about black women, which the movie completely left out. But overall, this is a fascinating story with an even more fascinating moral- which everyone will enjoy.