The Help (audiobook)

“I love The Help. Kathryn Stockett has given us glorious characters and a powerful, truth-filled story. Abilene, Minny, and Skeeter, show that people from this troubled time came together despite their differences and that ordinary women can be heroic.”

“The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a story that made me weep as I rejoiced for each of humanity’s small but steady triumphs over hate and fear. I will never forget this wonderful book.”

“Daring, vitally important, and deftly handled. I loved and admired The Help. It’s very courageous. VERY courageous. Fantastic.”

“A wonderful book. A compelling and comically poignant tale about three women, and a time and a place that is in many ways very much still with us.”

“A magical novel. Heartbreaking and oh so true, the voices of these characters, their lives and struggles, will stay with you long after you reluctantly come to the end.”

“A startling, resonant portrait of the intertwined lives of women on opposite sides of the racial divide. Stockett’s many gifts—a keen eye for character, a wicked sense of humor, the perfect timing of a natural born storyteller—shine as she evokes a time and place when black women were expected to help raise white babies and yet could not use the same bathroom as their employers. Her characters, both white and black, are so fully fleshed they practically breathe—no stock villains or pious heroines here. I’m becoming an evangelist for The Help. Don’t miss this wise and astonishing debut.”

“Lush, original, and poignant, Kathryn Stockett has written a wondrous novel. You will be swept away as they work, play, and love during a time when possibilities for women were few but their dreams of the future were limitless. A glorious read.”

“It’s graceful and real, a compulsively readable story of three women who watch the Mississippi ground shifting beneath their feet as the words of men like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bob Dylan pervade their genteel town. When folks at your book club wonder what to read next month, go on and pitch this wholly satisfying novel with confidence.”

“[A] wise, poignant novel…You’ll catch yourself cheering out loud.”

“Southern whites’ guilt for not expressing gratitude to the black maids who raised them threatens to become a familiar refrain. But don’t tell Kathryn Stockett because her first novel is a nuanced variation on the theme that strikes every note with authenticity. In a page-turner that brings new resonance to the moral issues involved, she spins a story of social awakening as seen from both sides of the American racial divide.”

“Didn’t disappoint…Heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.”

“[A] story with heart and hope…A good old fashioned novel.”

“This heartbreaking story is a stunning debut from a gifted talent.”

“If you’ve enjoyed the southern charm of Fannie Flagg or The Secret Life of Bees, you’ll find The Help a delight.”

“Four peerless actors render an array of sharply defined black and white characters in the nascent years of the civil rights movement. They each handle a variety of Southern accents with aplomb and draw out the daily humiliation and pain the maids are subject to, as well as their abiding affection for their white charges. The actors handle the narration and dialogue so well that no character is ever stereotyped, the humor is always delightful, and the listener is led through the multilayered stories of maids and mistresses. The novel is a superb intertwining of personal and political history in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s, but this reading gives it a deeper and fuller power.”

“Full of heart and history, this one has bestseller written all over it.”

“With pitch-perfect tone and an unerring facility for character and setting, Stockett’s richly accomplished debut novel inventively explores the unspoken ways in which the nascent civil rights and feminist movements threatened the southern status quo…[A] luminous portrait of friendship, loyalty, courage, and redemption.”

“Surely worth reading.”