Fifteen years after “The Help,” Kathryn Stockett returns with “The Calamity Club,” a similar novel, though far more ambitious. Set in 1930s Oxford, Mississippi, the book opens in a world weighed down by heat, poverty and desperation, but what drives it forward is not its setting alone — it’s the women who are struggling to survive in a post-depression world.
This story has quite a cast of interesting characters, some lovable and some not. It alternates narratives between two of the main characters, taking readers into their hearts and souls from the minute they’re introduced. Birdie Calhoun is a sharp and defiant woman struggling to hold her fractured family together; Meg Lefleur is an 11-year-old orphan whose story is as heartbreaking as it is fascinating. Meg, abandoned at a young age and subjected to both physical and emotional abuse in the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, quickly proves to be a compelling characters. She is someone you start to root for from the beginning: bright, observant and stubbornly hopeful.
Birdie, meanwhile, is the kind of character that I think Stockett writes best. She is overlooked, underestimated and far more capable than anyone gives her credit for. Labeled the “spinster sister,” she moves through the world with a mix of humor and a deep loyalty, especially when it comes to protecting the women around her. When her life intersects with Meg’s, the novel truly comes to life.
From there, “The Calamity Club” expands into a sprawling narrative populated by a wide range of characters, though none are secondary. From the girls trapped inside the orphanage and the women who run it to the churchgoing social circles of Oxford and the committee figures enforcing its rules, Stockett fills the novel with vivid representations of flawed, resilient women navigating impossible circumstances, alongside men who are indifferent at best and destructive at worst. It’s a dynamic that feels heavy-handed, truth be told, but it also reinforces the novel’s investment in female strength and solidarity.
Stockett builds a thematically expansive novel. She takes on institutional injustice in her depiction of the sterilization of women deemed immoral or feeble-minded, as well as the brutal conditions within orphanages. These topics are some of the novel’s most haunting, grounding its emotional arcs in historical violence. At the same time, the story explores grief, identity, family obligation, addiction and the stigma surrounding sexuality — tying these struggles together in a way that makes the stakes feel constant but also very real and believable.
Stockett’s greatest strength is writing memorable characters that make you want to stay with them for a very long time. Even across more than 600 pages, there was rarely a moment I wasn’t invested in what happens next. That said, the book’s length is both a strength and a weakness. In the middle portion, certain storylines stretch further than necessary and the narrative begins to lose its urgency. It becomes a whole new book, weighed down by its own overeager ambition to include everything at the cost of clarity. In one particular late-stage turn, the plot suddenly leans on a more extreme and morally fraught attempt at survival that feels tonally inconsistent with what the book has built up to at that point.
Even so, the novel ultimately regains its footing with a very lovable ending. Though arriving a bit quickly compared to the long build-up, after spending so much time with these characters, it delivers a payoff that feels earned.
“The Calamity Club” is not a perfect novel, but it is a compelling one. It’s messy, expansive and occasionally uneven, but it is also full of heart. Stockett once again proves she can create characters who feel unforgettable: Women who might otherwise be dismissed instead become the undeniable center of the story.
“The Calamity Club” makes clear that the wait for Kathryn Stockett’s return may have been long, but not wasted.
Daily Arts Writer Ava Emery can be reached at avaemery@umich.edu.
