The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
Published May 5, 2026
11 year old Meg Lefleur sits alone in a dark, moldy room of an orphanage with only her imagination and memories of the mother who abandoned her two years before to keep her company. Meanwhile, Birdie Calhoun, a 24 year old spinster, travels from her small town to ask her well off sister for money to save the family home. She carries a cattle prod slipped into her purse by her Mee Maw to ward off unwanted men and a yearning to experience a different life than she has known. It’s the height of the Depression in Mississippi, and little does Birdie know that her socialite sister Frances Tartt, who volunteers at the orphanage where Meg sits, is about to fall on hard times herself. These are the two narratives that begin Kathryn Stockett’s long awaited second novel, The Calamity Club. Seventeen years have passed since The Help became a publishing phenomenon, earning both acclaim and criticism for Stockett’s representation of Black women.
The storylines of The Calamity Club are split between two narrators in this sprawling novel. At 638 pages, it could have benefited from a firmer editorial hand, as sections of the book drag repetitively.
Birdie and Meg form a connection, but for much of the novel the story moves in separate directions. Still, Stockett proves herself a gifted storyteller through both perspectives, and the voices remain lively and entertaining, particularly Meg’s sharp commentary. Describing her stepfather’s laugh, she says, “It is the kind that is all on the inside. His body shakes and he keeps his lips shut, but he is still laughing. I wonder, did somebody tell him he should not do that out loud?” As their lives intertwine, we meet Garnett Pittman, the matron of the orphanage, who is deeply and disturbingly obsessed with Meg. Meg’s mother Charlie makes a late appearance just after Meg has been adopted by a well off family. Birdie’s sister Frances and her mother in law lose their fortune and take Charlie in out of convenience.
Desperation, poverty, and the limited choices available to Depression-era women drive the plot into increasingly unlikely territory. Birdie, with a “slapped together band of misfits,” transforms the once opulent but now disgraced Tartt home into a brothel under the nose of a small Mississippi town fueled by gossip. Add an anti-vice squad to the mix, and the improbability grows by the page. Woven throughout the novel are themes of forced sterilization, child labor, women’s rights, and the dependable duplicity of men.
Considering the risks and the unlikeliness of pulling off such a scheme in the Bible Belt, Stockett’s story often strays into fantasy. The ending resolutions feel revoltingly tidy. Still, The Calamity Club is well written, engaging, and keenly observed from start to finish. The novel may not break new literary ground, but its entertainment value is undeniable.
