I felt like the last girl on earth still not having read this book, but I tried not to expect anything specific out of it.Nevertheless, I couldn't stop thinking how right they'd gotten the film. Besides minor plot disagreements between the two media, the spirit of each character was captured so well in the actresses they chose for Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter. The book, however, made those women dearer to me by the depth with which I felt they were written. What I have to say about them almost feels redundant, because it has probably been said a thousand times already, in a thousand other reviews of this great novel. Minny is hilarious and tragic at the same time. She sparks hope with her backtalking and made me laugh out loud with her comments on Celia. Yet her struggles at home portray the horrible fate of many mothers in her position at the time. Aibileen is just a precious human being and I completely got how she should be friends with Minny. I would want to protect her, too, and hurt anyone who tried to harm her more than she had already been harmed.Skeeter's strength and disregard for the conventions she was in (which conventions, in their turn, disregarded 1/2 of town) made me hope real stories like hers did happen. It also made me believe in strength even in circumstances that almost seem to make moving forward impossible.What more can I say? I laughed out loud, I cried out loud. It was good.
