The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

Amy     


historical fiction

Coming out of the Great Depression, times are hard for almost everyone. In small-town Mississippi in 1933, Birdie, her mother, and her grandmother are struggling to make ends meet on their small farm. In desperation, Birdie travels to Oxford to ask her wealthy, married sister, Frances, for a loan. But Birdie finds that things aren’t exactly as rosy as she’d imagined they’d be at Frances’ mansion. Frances is a volunteer at the local orphanage and brings Birdie to help organize the orphanage’s books. She meets Meg, an 11-year-old orphan who’s been mostly confined to the dingy office where Birdie is working, and the two strike up a quick friendship.

This long novel sucked me right in because of the wonderful characters—I couldn’t help but care about them. Told from both Birdie’s and Meg’s viewpoints, both were underdogs in less-than-ideal situations but determined to do the best they could. When their stories started weaving together, I was riveted and made the time to read or listen to The Calamity Club every chance I got. I also loved how the people in this novel do both good and bad things. No one is all good and no one is all bad, as in reality. These people, particularly, were living at a difficult time and had to determine where they drew their lines.

I don’t believe I’ve read a novel set in the post-depression South and I really enjoyed learning about this part of our history. It’s been a long time since Kathryn Stockett’s other novel, The Help, was published seventeen years ago! It was one of the best novels I ever read. The Calamity Club was well worth the wait and has cemented my opinion that Stockett is an amazingly talented author. This was an entertaining, impactful, educational, heartbreaking, and heartwarming novel. Sure, there were some extraordinary coincidences and a few audacious gambles that seemed unlikely, but I still loved all the time I spent in Birdie’s and Meg’s world.

Fortunately, I was able to both read the Kindle version and listen to the audiobook, depending on what was best for me at any given time. In the audiobook, January Lavoy read Birdie’s viewpoint and Jenna Lamia read Meg’s viewpoint. I’ve enjoyed both of their narrations in the past and they showed off their large vocal repertoires and spot-on acting in this novel, as I expected they would. However, I had a problem with Lavoy’s Birdie. To me, she made Birdie sound too sophisticated most of the time. She was from small-town Alabama in the 1930s and her vocal tone sounded much too worldly in my opinion. Because of that, I’ll give Lavoy an A- and Lamia an A. I will also mention that the Kindle and audiobook versions were out of sync with their chapter numbers which was annoying and not something I’ve ever experienced before. One was numbered 3 chapters ahead of the other. I did not bother to figure out how that was possible or which one was incorrect. I wanted to spend all my time absorbing the wonderful story. And then I returned the audiobook to the library before I thought to figure out the discrepancy.