Whew, this book was long! At 650+ pages (28+ hours on audio), Kathryn Stockett’s The Calamity Club is an epic force of a novel that, despite its length, is well worth the read. Set in Oxford, Mississippi in 1933, the story alternates between the perspectives of eleven-year-old Margot “Meg” Lefleur, one of the precocious “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum who lives a lonely life being constantly mistreated by the orphanage’s horrid director, and twenty-four-year-old Birdie Calhoun, an outspoken spinster from the Mississippi Delta who visits her sister in the hopes of asking for her help with their struggling family back home, but finds herself entrenched in a cataclysmic situation involving her sister’s family that ends up changing her life forever.
The meticulousness of Stockett’s research definitely shines through here, as the historical details are vividly rendered throughout, making the story both incredibly atmospheric and immersive. I absolutely felt transported to the Depression-era South – a historically significant time period where various prejudices and hypocrisies related to race, gender, and class were rampant. Under such circumstances, the story’s two female protagonists – Birdie and Meg – must constantly fight to live their lives the way they choose to rather than the way others expect them to. Thematically, Stockett covers a lot of ground with this story – abandonment, alcoholism, abuse, women’s rights, family dynamics, race and gender relations, death, grief, etc.—with many of these themes woven seamlessly into the story alongside the historical elements in such a way so as not to impact the story’s flow and pacing. In addition, despite the heaviness of these themes, Stockett also managed to balance them out with lightheartedness and humor where appropriate, which I definitely appreciated.
Historical aspects aside, another area that truly stands out with this story is its characters, all of whom are tremendously well-developed, both heroes and villains alike. In this regard, I highly highly recommend listening to the audiobook version of the story, as the two narrators, Jenna Lamia and January LaVoy, do an especially astounding job – they not only bring the two main characters Birdie and Meg to life, they also bring the rest of the characters to life as well through the way they perform the other characters’ voices with different accents and tones, to the point that I actually felt like I was listening to a full cast narration. Given how realistic the narrators made these characters come across, I felt fully invested in their lives and wanted to know what would happen to them (and of course, I was rooting for them every step of the way as they fought to rise above their circumstances).
With all that said, I definitely agree with all the other reviewers who’ve mentioned how unnecessarily long this book is and how perhaps it could benefit from some editing. In addition to some sections that were more overly descriptive than they needed to be, some of the storylines could’ve also been trimmed down somewhat. Here again, I recommend listening to the audio version because the narration is so exceptionally done that it immerses you fully into the story and makes the somewhat draggier parts feel less tedious.
Lastly, I think I’m probably one of the few people on the planet who has not yet read Stockett’s first novel The Help (despite it being on my TBR for ages), but I hope to rectify that soon, as I really enjoyed Stockett’s writing and storytelling here and since her debut is considered her masterpiece, it definitely needs to be moved to my “must-read” list!
Received ARC from Spiegel & Grau via NetGalley.
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