The Help<\/a>,\u201d Kathryn Stockett returns with \u201cThe Calamity Club,\u201d a similar novel,\u00a0though 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 \u2014 it\u2019s the women who are struggling to survive in a post-depression world.\u00a0<\/p>\nThis 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\u2019re 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 <\/strong>compelling characters. She is someone you start to root for from the beginning: bright, observant and stubbornly hopeful.<\/p>\nBirdie, 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 \u201cspinster sister,\u201d 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\u2019s, the novel truly comes to life.<\/p>\n
From there, \u201cThe Calamity Club\u201d expands into a sprawling narrative populated by <\/strong>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\u2019s a dynamic that feels heavy-handed, truth be told, but it also reinforces the novel\u2019s investment in female strength and solidarity.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nStockett 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\u2019s 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 \u2014 tying these struggles together in a way that makes the stakes feel constant but also very real and believable.<\/p>\n
Stockett\u2019s 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\u2019t invested in what happens next. That said, the book\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Calamity Club\u201d is not a perfect novel, but it is a compelling one. It\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Calamity Club\u201d makes clear that the wait for Kathryn Stockett\u2019s return may have been long, but not wasted.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nDaily Arts Writer Ava Emery can be reached at <\/em>avaemery@umich.edu<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\n
Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifteen years after \u201cThe Help,\u201d Kathryn Stockett returns with \u201cThe Calamity Club,\u201d a similar novel,\u00a0though 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 \u2014 it\u2019s the women who are struggling to survive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[4657,4656,2132,4300,2250,1937],"class_list":{"0":"post-5094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-ambitious","9":"tag-calamity","10":"tag-club","11":"tag-full","12":"tag-heart","13":"tag-messy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5096,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094\/revisions\/5096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}