Penguin| 5 May 2026| 638 pages e-Book| Review copy| 4*
Fourteen years ago I read Kathryn Stockett’s first novel, The Help and loved it. I also watched the film and loved that too. So when I saw on NetGalley she’d written a second novel. The Calamity Club, I requested it and was pleased to find that I loved it, too, although maybe not quite as much as The Help.
Description on Goodreads:
In 1933 Oxford, Mississippi, Prohibition is on the wane, and the Great Depression is tightening its grip. Poor and rich folks alike have fallen on hard times, even as the old social order remains. For women on the margins, the options are few and the price of dignity and self-determination is unbearably high.Eleven-year-old Meg, one of the unadoptable “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford on a mission to ask her social-climbing sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. And Charlie is a woman with a past, running low on luck but driven by fire, fury, and grit. When their fates converge, they come up with an audacious plan to take back control of their lives. Together, they form an unlikely sisterhood—but in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife, women’s freedom is fragile, and making an enemy can have dire consequences, will the price they pay for their outrageous risk-taking be too high?
My thoughts:
It took me a long time to read this book as it’s so long and detailed, with lots of characters and covering such emotive and serious issues. Maybe it could have been shorter, without losing any impact and it’s unevenly paced with slow sections that made the story drag at times. And I was surprised that the ending was so abrupt. Having said that the characters are wonderfully depicted, with depth making them really believable, especially Birdie, Charlie and Meg (although I wonder if she comes across as too adult for an eleven year old). The locations are well described, which really helped me as I don’t know the area at all.
The title tells you what you need to know. Set in 1933 during the Great Depression calamity follows calamity for all the characters; the miseries, pain and suffering are unrelenting right from the start as Meg enters The Lafayette County Orphan Asylum for Girls in Oxford, Mississippi. Her mother Charlie had gone shopping on Christmas Eve and never returned, leaving eleven year old Meg to fend for herself, until she was rescued by an unknown man – who he is is only revealed much later in the book. But this is not the end of Meg’s misfortunes as she is cruelly treated by Garnet Pitman, the head of the orphanage.
Birdie, meanwhile is living in Footely (a fictional small town) in the Delta, with her mother and sick grandmother. They fear they’ll lose their home as they are unable to pay the forty-three dollars they owe in property taxes. Her sister Frances has married Rory Tartt, a member of a wealthy family living in Oxford and Birdie travels there to ask for help. However, all is not right in the Tartt family and Birdie finds they’re unable to pay off a mortgage of $2,754. Birdie then helps Frances and her mother-in-law as they try to raise the money to save the Tartt’s grand house as well as Birdie’s home.
What follows is truly remarkable, when Charlie comes up with a plan to raise the money through the Calamity Club she and Birdie set up in the Tartt’s house, employing a group of prostitutes. This could have developed into a farce, but it’s actually a story highlighting the hardships suffered by women at the hands of men and the Anti-Vice Leagues. So-called feeble minded women and those considered to be sexually promiscuous, were imprisoned and sterilized. Above all it’s a story of the women’s resilience, courage and determination to survive against all the odds. I loved it despite its length.
My thanks to the author and NetGalley for a review copy.
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