The New York Times called Kathryn Stockett’s first novel, The Help, “a button pusher, soon to become a wild best seller”. The novel, which had been rejected by 60 agents, sold millions of copies and was a huge success despite some criticism of its depiction of black maids through the eyes of a white woman.
My heart sank when I saw the title of Stockett’s second novel, The Calamity Club. Although I liked GK Chesterton’s The Club of Queer Trades when I read it about 50 years ago, something about the word “club” in titles irks me.
Stockett’s opening chapters, written in the kind of “persona” voices I also have an unfair aversion to – slangy, chirpy, smart-naive – confirmed my fears. The cute voice is that of Meg, or “Nutmeg”, a smart 11 year old living in an orphanage in Mississippi where she is starved, locked up and beaten regularly. It is set in the 1930s, in the deep south. If you think the US is a dreadful place today, read this book – all 600 plus pages. A heavy load of lightweight lit.
After about a hundred pages I was seduced. Meg is interesting and the Dickensian awfulness abates when sensible and kind Birdie is introduced. Plots multiply and tensions tighten as we long for the evil stepmother of the orphanage to get her comeuppance. The prose is lively and undemanding, but well written. The message – good women are resilient and help one another overcome evil – is indeed button-pushing, but not sickeningly so. The women in the calamity club are daring in their methods to overcome financial adversity.
READ MORE
In 1928 Mississippi legalised the sterilisation of anyone deemed “an imbecile”, the afterword informs us. Women considered to be promiscuous were so judged. That legislation was the inspiration for the novel, which, in its colourful, vivacious way, paints a portrait of a ghastly society – racist, misogynistic, corrupt.
At one point starving Nutmeg is reduced to trying to eat a book. Ulysses. “The boringest book I ever ate”, is her verdict. Stockett is making a point. This novel is not Ulysses, nor wants to be, although it is almost as long. But it’s definitely got something. A good beach read.
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is the Laureate for Irish Fiction
