Bookshelf
Bookshelf
GH’s books director, Joanne Finney, shares her pick of this month’s new hardback releases
When an author has a huge hit like The Help as their debut novel, it can be incredibly daunting to write a second. That might explain why it’s been more than 15 years between Kathryn Stockett’s first novel and her follow-up, The Calamity Club. The Help was one of those rare word-of-mouth books that everyone seemed to be reading when it was published in 2009, and it started a global conversation thanks to its frank depiction of racial inequality in 1960s America.
Like The Help, Stockett’s new novel is set in the Deep South – this time in 1930s Oxford, Mississippi. Meg, an 11-year-old girl, has been left at Lafayette County Orphan Asylum. As a ‘big girl’, she’s unlikely to be adopted, a fact she’s told frequently by the house’s cruel director, Miss Garnett. Birdie has come to Oxford to beg for a loan from her sister, who’s married well, and when she volunteers at the orphanage, she and Meg form a friendship.