My Goodreads and Amazon review of The Calamity Club: A Novel (Rated 5) – Fallen Women. The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett is a tragic yet often hilarious novel about “fallen” women in Mississippi during the Great Depression. “Fallen” because they’ve been forced to turn to prostitution to support themselves; or “fallen” because, once wealthy, they’ve now become poor. There are also those who started out at the bottom, two of whom provide the voices that narrate Stockett’s wildly entertaining plot. One is the 24-year-old spinster Birdie, sharp-witted and competent, but biologically doomed to childlessness and so deemed unmarriageable. Another is the outspoken 11-year-old Meg, too smart for her own good, consigned to an orphanage straight out of hell, run by a rabid morality crusader. Stockett’s talent, in addition to being a good storyteller, is a gift for imbuing each character with a distinctive voice. As a novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire her ability to capture the vocabulary and inflection of widely different players while honoring their common geographical identity. Stockett’s novel about calamity is a great success.
The best little whorehouse in 1930’s Mississippi
Why writers read: “A good book is an education of the heart.” – Susan Sontag
