THE CALAMITY CLUB

THE CALAMITY CLUB BY Kathryn Stockett

YELLOW LIGHT WITH EXTREME CAUTION

AGES: ADULT

This is not going to be an easy review to write. This story is definitely a very engaging but complex read as you follow multiple women's journeys until all the threads come together. I will try and not spoil as much as possible, but there will be some spoilers as I go along. Despite the engaging story, there is a lot of content to be aware of. This book covers almost all the categories of "Heads Up." Be sure to read through that section at the end of this review.

If you find large novels overwhelming, The Calamity Club is not for you. weighing in at a hefty 634 pages, this one will keep a reader busy for a few days!

Like I already mentioned, this book follows multiple women's journeys: primarily three. However, there are many other women's stories woven in and out of the stories of these three main characters. Despite this, the book does a remarkably good job at keeping everyone straight for the reader to follow.

One last item of business before jumping into the story itself. The time period is 1933, the middle of the Great Depression. Not everyone, but just about everyone, is suffering financially during this time. That is the lynchpin in this story that causes the unexpected answer to arise.

Meg is an eleven-year-old girl who finds herself in the worst possible situation. Her mother, whom she thought loved her, disappeared one day and never returned. She winds up in The Lafayette County Orphan Asylum For Girls. A horrible place run by an evil woman (we'll discuss her more in a moment), Miss Garnett, but Meg endures a level of hatred from Miss Garnett that the other orphans don't that initially doesn't make sense. It will by the end of the story.

Charlie is Meg's mother who has a journey of her own that takes her away from her child against her will. When she finally returns to collect Meg, she finds that she has been adopted and doesn't know where she is. It's going to take some serious money to find her daughter, get her, and begin a new life.

Birdie is the often unnoticed older sister of beautiful Frances. But Birdie is the rescuer, the solver in difficult situations that are continually dumped in her lap that especially revolve around the breakup of her family. Most of these situations take money, and that's a very difficult thing to come by in these hard days.

Each of these journeys are difficult, moving, filled with pain, and everything comes down to money. Charlie needs money to get her daughter back and Birdie needs money to rescue both her mother and her sister out of some pretty heavy duty financial needs. So what's the answer to getting one's hands on lots of money in a short amount of time? It's actually quite simple. Opening a cat house, recruiting prostitutes to come and work, and doing it under the cover of a dance club, because even in times like the Great Depression. men will spend their money for some good times. While there is a lot of crass talk coming from the prostitutes about what they do, you don't go into the bedrooms with them and read about detailed happenings. I'll leave it at that.

There are some extremely funny moments in this book. The house they end up using will make your level of anxiety hit the roof wondering if they can pull it off. The things the girls say to each each other are sometimes hilarious. BUT there are some very sad times, too. Kathryn Stockett doesn't leave out the seriousness of disease, abuse, and what these women's futures look like as they "age out."

LET"S TALK ABOUT MY BIGGEST HANG UP WITH THE BOOK. My biggest issue with the book is one that is becoming a trend in today's bestsellers - the issue of Christians being portrayed as evil or stupid. Miss Garnett is nothing short of evil in this book, and she claims to be a Christian woman. I don't know if Kathryn Stockett would call herself a Christian or not. If she's not, she has no reason not to portray Christians in a poor light. We're not coming from the same foundation. I get that and try and read books coming from an author's perspective.. My issue is that there are a lot of things that current authors are NOT in their books with regards to their characters, but it is the Christian that is typically painted to be the "bad" person, and most of the others are let off the hook. I hope what I'm saying makes sense. There is no doubt that there are things in history that have been done by "professing" Christians that have been atrocious, (I would question those individuals Christianity), but there has been so much good done as well. We will see "Christian" characters show up in secular books as negative characters, but we should also see some reflecting good as well. I'm seeing very little of that, and it really smells of agenda. It makes reading the new releases often very wearying.

HEADS UP - This book contains: prostitution, sterilization, alcoholism, homosexuality (2 different people are mentioned - no mention of their specific sex life), the horrific treatments one homosexual goes through to try and become heterosexual (specific treatments are not listed - just alluded to), suicide, two specific ongoing relationships two female characters have with married men, language - especially uses of g**d***