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THE CALAMITY CLUB
Kathryn Stockett
Penguin Random House Canada
May 5, 2026
656 pages
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I am so sorry that I have finished this book. It is over 600 pages long and I wish it would never end. It is set in the Deep South, Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933. Times are very hard during the Great Depression.
The story has three main characters. Birdie is the older and plainer of the two sisters. She travels to visit her younger (prettier, important fact) sister to ask for money to help the family. Meg is an 11 year old girl wasting away and being mistreated in an orphanage. Charlie is Meg’s mother who was forced to abandon Meg because of the harsh and brutal laws of the era.
There are two storylines which are separate but connected.
The 1930s were a terrible decade. The depression created desperate situations for many people. Prohibition had not been repealed, there were no jobs, people were willing to resort to anything to make enough to support themselves and their families. And, life was very much different for women.
Besides the three main characters, there are many interesting and well developed personalities present. The ingenuity, the strength, the resilience that people demonstrated was amazing. Conversely, there were also mean characters (bordering on evil) to balance out the cast.
I don’t have the words or ability to describe how much I enjoyed this book. It is funny, it is sad, it is interesting, it is intense. It’s one of the longest books I’ve read in many years but it held my attention the whole time. It has been 17 years since the author released her first book, The Help. Well worth the wait. I hope we don’t have to wait as long for the next masterpiece.
Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for the Advance Readers Copy.
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