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May 5, 2026 
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| “It’s impossible to write about a place like Mississippi, especially in the 1930s, and not talk racism and sexism,” Kathryn Stockett says of her new novel, “The Calamity Club.” Thea Traff for The New York Times |
Dear readers,
A few weekends ago, racing through a 650-page novel like a cheetah, I had a startling realization. Do I like books with plot now?
“The Calamity Club,” the rollicking new novel by Kathryn Stockett, has a lot of it: financial distress, marital secrets, a wicked orphanage and a parental revelation worthy of “Maury.” That’s just the start. Its opening scene features a character in 1930s Mississippi buying as many condoms — “widows” — from the pharmacy as she can carry, and praying the nosy woman nearby doesn’t clock what’s going on.
It’s been 17 years since Stockett published her debut novel “The Help,” which went on to sell 15 million copies, was the basis of an Oscar-winning film and became a cultural lightning rod, owing to Stockett’s depictions of Black characters. My colleague Elisabeth Egan profiled her this week, and waded into Stockett’s career, the controversy and its aftermath.
“The Calamity Club” focuses on two white women in Depression-era Mississippi. One is Birdie, a tough bookkeeper who adapts to her family’s precarity and overall chaos with a sense of humor. The other is Meg, a child whom Birdie meets at the truly harrowing orphanage where she’s been left. Their fates are intertwined in ways that make for an engrossing, and often hilarious, literary experience. (Intrigued? Here is our review.)
See you on Friday.
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