this story impressed me on many levels
What story do I tell you?
From page one until almost the last, this story impressed me on many levels--As a writer, I was impressed and envious that a first novel could be SO good.As a reader, I fell in love with the voices of the book's 3 main characters--Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny--and never wanted their story to end.As a human being, the stories of black servants and their white employers in 1960s Mississippi alternately wrenched my heart and created a bitter knot in my stomach.  As a white person, the attitudes of (most of) the white characters in this story are an embarassment to me.  I know it's just a novel, but I also know (even with not having lived any further south than Virginia) that these attitudes are not fiction.The bond between Aibileen and Mae Mobley, one of the two white children she cared for, was beautifully drawn, as was Aibileen's hope for MaeMo to grow up a different kind of white woman than her mother and most other white women who inhabit the story.The balance these characters had to dance between wanting to do something that felt RIGHT--something that mattered and might help the next generation have a better life--and the fear of doing so in that racially explosive time and place was palpable throughout much of the story.In the last half of the book, I was reading while watching TV--something I don't think I've EVER done before--reading during commercials, reading in bed, reading on the porch...I felt that I HAD to keep reading.  Until the last chapter or two, I was absolutely convinced that I was going to give this book a 5-star review.  I was telling everyone I knew about it and recommending it heartily.But then came the ending, and I found it SO unsatisfying...especially compared to how incredibly satisfying I found the rest of the book.  I may be wrong, but it screamed one of two things to me--sequel or tight deadline; i.e., either things were left unfinished because there's going to be another book or she ran out of time to bring it to the complete, fulfilling and heart-gladdening ending that this amazing story deserved.I still very much recommend the book; just perhaps not as enthusiastically as I would have 50, 100 or 400 pages ago.Edited 08/11/11 to add that I just came from seeing the movie version of The Help and I thought it was FABULOUS!  The movie's director and the book's author are friends since childhood, so I was very hopeful that he would do a good job bringing this wonderful story to the screen and, in my opinion, he has.  The acting is marvelous, especially from Viola Davis (Aibileen) and Octavia Spencer (Minnie).  If you loved this book, I think you'll love the movie too! 