Kathryn Stockett – She Reads Novels

Since reading The Help, which was published in 2009, it’s been a very long wait for Kathryn Stockett’s second novel. The Calamity Club finally arrived earlier this year, after a seventeen year gap, and I put it on my list for the 20 Books of Summer challenge – which maybe wasn’t a great idea as it was so long I could probably have read two or three other books for the challenge in the same length of time! Anyway, I loved it so it was time well spent.

The book is set in Oxford, Mississippi in 1933. Many families are struggling financially as the Great Depression tightens its grip and Birdie Calhoun’s mother and grandmother have sent her to Oxford to ask her wealthy sister Frances to lend them some money. However, Birdie quickly discovers that her sister’s life isn’t as perfect as she would like everyone to believe and she and her husband are having difficulties of their own.

Meanwhile, in Oxford’s Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur is still hoping that her mother will come to reclaim her. Abandoned on Christmas Eve, Meg has been living at the orphanage for two years and is now one of the ‘big girls’, considered almost unadoptable as most people would prefer a baby or toddler. For some reason, she has also become the main target of Garnett Pittman, the cruel and abusive woman in charge of the orphanage. Miserable and isolated, Meg is given a glimmer of hope when she meets Birdie, who has taken a temporary job as bookkeeper at the orphanage.

The novel is narrated by both Birdie and Meg and each has her own narrative voice (Meg’s is particularly distinctive). As the book has more than 600 pages, there’s obviously a lot more to the plot than the brief summary I’ve given above, but I don’t want to spoil things by going into too much detail. The way in which Birdie sets out to make the money she and her family need, while also trying to help Meg, is unexpected and daring, so I’ll leave you to find out what it is for yourself if you decide to read the book. What I can tell you is that it’s a book which touches on lots of interesting but serious topics including prostitution and what drives a woman to it, views on homosexuality at a time when it was considered an illness that could be cured, alcoholism and how it can break up a family, and of course dealing with poverty and everything that comes with it. However, it’s not as depressing as it sounds and there’s plenty of humour to lighten the mood, mostly provided by the unusual group of women who form the Calamity Club of the title.

I liked Birdie, who is outspoken, loyal and courageous, but it was Meg who really won me over. I thought Stockett perfectly captured her vulnerability, her longing to feel loved and wanted and her desperation to get away from the orphanage and never be sent back. She’s also intelligent, resourceful and, due to her circumstances, often seems older than her years, so she’s a child character with a lot of depth and complexity. There are other characters who, although much less sympathetic, are equally memorable: Garnett Pittman is a truly horrifying villain, while Birdie’s shallow, self-absorbed sister Frances is a constant source of frustration for both Birdie and the reader!

So, does the book feel too long? I think at times, yes, it does, and could probably have been condensed a little bit, but on the other hand it means there was plenty of time to become fully drawn into the story and the world Stockett was building. I loved the insight this book gives us into life in 1930s Mississippi and I’m hoping we won’t have to wait another seventeen years for Kathryn Stockett’s next book!

Thanks to Fig Tree for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 18/20 of 20 Books of Summer

As I’ve mentioned before, I always find it difficult to write about a book that so many people have already read. I feel as if there’s nothing new I could possibly say and that nobody will want to hear about it yet again anyway (which I know is not true – there is no book that absolutely everybody in the world has read, however much it sometimes seems that way). But at least I’ve read The Help now and can see why it’s been getting so much attention. And I have to agree with all the bloggers who’ve been giving this book such glowing reviews because it really does deserve it.

The Help is told in the form of alternating narratives by three women living in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s. Two of them, Aibileen and Minny, are black women working as maids, or ‘helps’, for white families. The third is Eugenia Phelan, nicknamed Skeeter because she’s ‘long and leggy and mosquito-thin’. In contrast to the first two narrators, Skeeter is a white woman from a rich family. Skeeter dreams of becoming a writer and convinces Aibileen and Minny to help her write a book throwing new light on the life of a black maid in Jackson.

I loved all three of the narrators, who were each given very different and distinctive voices of their own. I thought it was impressive that Stockett could write so convincingly from the perspectives of three such different people. The intelligent, dignified Aibileen was a lovely, engaging narrator and probably my favourite. But Minny was an equally captivating character – she was outspoken and funny and in some ways felt the most real. I liked Skeeter too but found that she didn’t come to life for me as vividly as the other two. I found it hard to believe that she hadn’t noticed how cruel and prejudiced her best friends were until she reached the age of twenty two (and also hard to believe that she would have been friends with people like them in the first place).

The Help is a powerful and thought-provoking read which raises a number of issues relating to various aspects of racial discrimination, segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, though I’m happy to leave it to people with more knowledge of these subjects to discuss them in the depth they deserve. Judging it purely on its merits as a novel, this was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read this year. I was alternately enraged by the prejudice and injustice the black maids were forced to endure, amused by the antics of Minny and the other characters, intrigued by the well-meaning but very eccentric Celia Foote, and filled with loathing for Hilly Holbrook, one of the vilest characters ever!