finished reading

Set during the Great Depression, this novel is about female ingenuity.  The three narrative threads weave Meg, an 11-year-old orphan, Birdie, a brainy spinster, and Charlie, a down-on-her-luck woman, together while exploring 1930s social mores and expectations against a backdrop of financial ruin.  Meg, Birdie, and Charlie, as well as the cast of secondary characters, are so fully developed that they jump from the page.

The author explores heavy social issues, such as eugenics, poverty, gender and racial inequalities, but focuses more on the characters' resilience, persistence, and friendship.  My heart would break for Meg's plight at The Orphanage, only for her precociousness to save the moment from becoming maudlin. 

This novel is too long.  There, I've said it. 

From the publisher:

In 1933 Oxford, Mississippi, Prohibition is on the wane, and the Great Depression is tightening its grip. Poor and rich folks alike have fallen on hard times, even as the old social order remains. For women on the margins, the options are few and the price of dignity and self-determination is unbearably high.

Eleven-year-old Meg, one of the unadoptable “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford on a mission to ask her social-climbing sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. And Charlie is a woman with a past, running low on luck but driven by fire, fury, and grit. When their fates converge, they come up with an audacious plan to take back control of their lives. Together, they form an unlikely sisterhood—but in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife, women’s freedom is fragile, and making an enemy can have dire consequences, will the price they pay for their outrageous risk-taking be too high?

The Calamity Club will make you laugh, cry, and cheer—an epic testament to resilience, friendship, and the fierce, funny women who know that calamity can be the spark of new beginnings. This is Kathryn Stockett at her most confident, heartfelt, and hilarious—the triumphant return of one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.