The Calamity Club

I love Kathryn Stockett’s writing.

Despite the wide criticism of her beloved debut novel The Help, I was not among her critics. I thought The Help was wonderful, and The Calamity Club reminded me why I like Stockett so much. She has a way of writing that makes it very easy to mentally cast the movie as you read. You can picture the house, the characters, the town, and the whole thing playing out in your head. She uses just enough detail to bring everything to life without drowning the story in description, and she strikes a nice balance between dialogue, character development, inner monologue, and exposition.

In this case, I actually had a cast in my head the entire time. Birdie was Emma Stone, possibly because she played Skeeter in the movie adaptation of The Help, and possibly because Emma Stone is my forever heroine. Frances was Lacey Chabert, if only because I could hear Frances using the exact same tone Chabert used as Gretchen Weiners in Mean Girls when she said, “My FATHER, the inventor of TOASTER STRUDEL, wouldn’t be too pleased to hear about this.” Charlie was Charlize Theron. All three actresses would need to be about twenty years younger to actually play the roles, but that’s neither here nor there.

The story is long. At around 600 pages (and set in depression-era Mississippi), this is not exactly a book you casually knock out over a weekend without noticing. But I didn’t feel like it dragged very much. There are certainly some of the usual fictional misunderstandings where characters could save everyone several chapters of trouble if they would simply communicate honestly, but Birdie is a pretty good antidote to that. She is a “rip off the band-aid” sort of person. When her brand-new boyfriend starts talking about having children with her, she is horrified, even though she loves him, and immediately tells him the truth: she had measles as a child, and a doctor told her she would never have children.

I liked that about her.

Actually, I liked a lot about Birdie. Birdie is really the center of this story, and the catalyst for everything that happens throughout the book. She is tough and no-nonsense, and she does what needs to be done, even when she personally finds it distasteful.

Case in point: she certainly doesn’t want to turn Mrs. Tartt’s house into a brothel. But if that’s what is necessary to keep Mrs. Tartt and her (Birdie’s) sister from ending up on the street? Fine. Necessary. Let’s get this over with.

Birdie is honest and direct. She’ll scold you if you need scolding. But she isn’t cruel, and she isn’t terribly judgmental. Even when someone has done something that richly deserves judgment, Birdie is more of a “what’s done is done” sort of gal. Move forward. Don’t dwell.

I found that refreshing.

Meg was another favorite. She is such an endearing character that you can’t help but pull for her. Some people dislike the shifting between character perspectives, and I can understand why this one might be more jarring than most, since one of the main perspectives belongs to a child, but it didn’t bother me in this case. The book might have been just as good (and of more manageable length) if the perspective had remained with Birdie and the Meg parts simply weren’t told at all through her eyes, but to lose that would have lost a lot of the richness that made this story so memorable.

I loved Meg and Birdie, obviously, and I even ended up tolerating Frances, which is saying something because Frances is absolutely ridiculous. But she isn’t malicious. She’s just… Frances.

Charlie was wonderful and spunky. Even Mrs. Tartt, who could easily have been written as a foil to the other characters, turned out to be a damned good sport, and you love her for it.

The historical era is also necessary to understand some of the other things that happen in the story that would be completely anathema in a modern setting. For example, it’s hardly par for the course anymore for college-age men to visit whorehouses to “become men,” but that sort of thing was much more common in this era. And without giving away too much of the plot (it’s worth reading for the first time without knowing the details), you needed the historical setting to explain a lot about Frances’s husband.

All of this to say, Stockett doesn’t simply put modern characters in old-fashioned clothing and call it historical fiction – the time period actually matters and is a character in the story. It shapes what the characters can do, what they cannot do, and what happens to them when they step outside the boundaries of what society considers acceptable.

Because of the racial criticism surrounding The Help, I was more conscious of this issue while reading The Calamity Club. I hadn’t noticed anything particularly derogatory about Stockett’s writing of the Black characters when I read The Help, although I certainly understood the criticism when I heard it afterward. Some readers found the speech patterns of the Black characters offensive, arguing that Stockett was perpetuating the “ignorant Black character” trope. Others pointed out that the characters were, in fact, largely uneducated, and that their speech reflected their circumstances.

I was prepared to notice how Willy May and the other Black characters’ speech patterns were written this time around because I was paying attention to it (although they were much more minor characters in this story as compared to The Help.) To my eyes, Stockett seemed to have softened those language patterns in The Calamity Club, but I am also conscious of the fact that I am a white reader talking about a white author writing Black characters. I don’t feel particularly comfortable declaring whether or not Stockett “got it right.” I can only say what I noticed and how I experienced it.

The story is also very much women’s fiction, although I would not couch it as chick-lit. The heart of the book is a group of strong, determined women trying to survive circumstances that were designed to keep them powerless. If you’re not interested in stories about women’s resiliency and strength in the face of adversity, I can see having no interest in this one.

Personally, I loved it.

One thing I particularly appreciated was that the story wasn’t any bleaker than it needed to be. There are some genuinely horrible things that happen. Charlie is snatched off the street and spends years essentially imprisoned, leaving her nine-year-old daughter abandoned and starving until she is eventually placed in an orphanage. Meg spends years wondering what happened to her mother, unwilling to believe that she simply abandoned her.

That’s cruel. It’s horrible.

But Stockett doesn’t pile misery on top of misery and veer into “torture porn” territory. Meg isn’t abused beyond what the story requires. Meg’s foster parents are completely dysfunctional, but they aren’t cruel to her. Meg survives.

As long as this book was, I still wanted more. What happened to Birdie and Jack? What happened to Rory and Frances? What happened to Mrs. Tartt? We know Meg and Charlie are reunited, but what happens to all of the “ladies of the evening” they hired? Does Garnett Pittman quit running the orphanage? Does her husband leave her? Does Birdie go home to her family?

What happens to them?

I wanted to know!

The fact that I was dying to know what happened after I’d already read 600 pages is really a testament to Stockett’s writing prowess.

Fun Fact: According to the author, Stockett worked on this book for 7 or 8 years, and wrote over 800 pages, and got a bit stuck until she teamed up with a new publisher, who helped her get it over the finish line. It was cited in the New York Times as one of the most anticipated books of 2026. 

Bother if: You enjoy historical fiction centered around strong, determined women, complicated characters, and stories about resilience in the face of difficult circumstances. If you liked The Help, I think there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy this one, too. Stockett has that same ability to create characters who feel vivid enough that you can practically see them acting out the story in your head.

Don’t bother if: You aren’t interested in women’s fiction, Depression-era history, or stories about the ways women were treated by society, the church, and the state during this period. There are also themes involving poverty, racism, institutionalization, prostitution, abuse, and homophobia. None of those things are gratuitous, but they are part of the story. If 600 pages of historical women’s fiction doesn’t sound appealing, you probably don’t need to force yourself through this one.