Whitcoulls Recommends: The Calamity Club and The Wife, The Maid and The Mistress

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett. She wrote a book called The Help fifteen years ago which was a sensation at the time and subsequently made into a movie. This new one is also set in Mississippi, in 1933, during Prohibition and the Great Depression. Birdie’s family are impoverished, so she travels to visit her sister who’s married to a man of means in another town, hoping to get some financial support - but when she gets there finds that things are not at all as she’d imagined them to be. She meets another young woman down on her luck and the two of them embark on a high risk money making scheme - a brothel called The Calamity Club, from which they reap very considerable benefits but always under threat of discovery by the authorities. There’s a second thread to the story about a young girl named Meg who after being abandoned by her mother is being brought up in the local orphanage, and her life intersects with these women in what are eventually life changing ways. 

The Wife, The Maid and The Mistress by Ariel Lawhon whose most recent new book was The Frozen River. As with her other writing, this is based on real events - in 1930’s NYC, a judge stepped into a taxicab and simply disappeared - he was never heard from again, and it haunted New York society for years. This fictional account tells the story of the judge’s wife, the maid who cleaned their apartment and the showgirl who had been his lover, and posits a totally compelling and credible answer to the mystery. With access to some archival material from the times she’s done a great job of recreating what might have happened. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
EDB and joining me now is Wickle's Book by Joan McKenzie.
Good morning morning. Okay, I am really intrigued. Catherine Stockett, Yes,
has a new book out, and of course I can remember.
I think it was her last book, The Help. It's
really clearly. But how many years ago was that?

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Seventeen years since The Help and nothing in between. No,
but this book is six hundred and thirty pages long, Okay,
so it's properly taken her most of seventeen years to
write it.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I think it must have, Yes, tell me about it.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Well. Like The Help, it's set in Mississippi, which actually
is also where the author lives, and it takes place
in the nineteen thirties during what was Prohibition and the
Great Depression. And it's a book about women and the
lot they've been dealt in life and what they need
to do to survive, especially in that era. So there's
a lead character whose name is Bridy. Her family a

(01:04):
penniless they're desperate. She's despatch to visit her sister who
lives some distance away, to beg her sister and her
husband for financial support, and when she gets there she
finds that the sisters become a bit of a socialite
do gooder, and she volunteers for a local charity, which
happens to be a pretty ghastly orphanage where one of

(01:25):
the children is a nine year old girl called Meg
whose mother abandoned her and she's waiting endlessly for a
nice family to come along and adopt her, which of
course doesn't happen, and she and Bertie develop a bond,
and from then on this story is told from each
of their points of view. Bertie is increasingly desperate for money,

(01:45):
and to stave off destitution, she goes way off the reservation.
She teams up with a woman she call she meets
called Charlie, who has connections with the loose side of
town and nothing left to lose, and the two of
them open a brothel and to speak easy, which is
well frequented by the local men, but obviously it's really
high risk of the social mares at the time and

(02:09):
the very conservative southern nature of where they are. And
they call this venture the Calamity Club, which is where
the title comes from, and they give a number of
women the chance to earn a living, which, of course
during the Depression was really important. Potentially, however, you earn
it very precarious existence, but they were precarious times. And

(02:31):
I really liked the way that she pulled the threads
together of nine year old Meg and Birdie and her
story and brought them all together in what I thought
at the ending was really compelling in a really touching way.
But as I said, it is six hundred and thirty pages,
so it's a big whopper.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
It's efty, all right, then tell me about the Wife,
the Maid and the Mistress.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Isn't that a great title?

Speaker 2 (02:53):
It's title.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
It's by Ariel Lahon, and i'll spell her surname for
anyone who might be interested. It's lawhon and interesting. Actually
completely coincidentally, both of the books today have got a
common theme about prohibition and the Depression, because clearly that
was the Calamity Club. But at what course, we're huge
fans of Ariel Lahon's books. She did something called The

(03:15):
Frozen River, which we all loved, and what she's really
good at is fictionalizing real historical events and making them
into great stories. And this was actually her first book
which she did back in twenty fourteen, and now she's
become such a name that the publisher has reissued it.
And it's a case which has been a source of

(03:35):
intrigue in New York, in particular because it's based on
the true story of a well known judge. He was
a New York State Supreme Court justice named Joseph Crater,
and in nineteen thirty one night he went out to
dinner and then got in a taxi afterwards, since he
was never seen again, and there was a lot of
intrigue about this disappearance. And back then New York was
a really seedy, smoky, scrappy place with prohibition going on,

(04:00):
and the Mob was in charge of New York, and
there was lots of corruption in the police and in
the judiciar. And some of this takes place in a
speakeasy which was frequented by the judge and owned by
a well known gangster of the day, a real guy
called Awnie Madden. And on stage one night in the
book and at the time as it happened, there's a

(04:21):
woman singing who turns out to be a very young
billy Holiday, So she brings in real character into this story.
And every year on the anniversary of the judge's disappearance,
his wife goes back to this speakeasy to have a drink.
What won't be speakeasy anymore, but you know, it was
to have a drink with the cop who investigated the case.

(04:41):
And at the time he disappeared, there were three significant
women in his life, his wife, the maid who looked
after his apartment, and his lover. And in the author's note,
the author says she's attempting to show what could have
happened to the judge, not necessarily what did, but I
love what she's come up with, because he was a
pretty unlikable guy, and I love the way that she's

(05:02):
fictionalized exactly what might have happened.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
It's really good, fascinating, Okay, Jones. So that last book
was The Wife, The Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lahon,
And also the first book that Jones spoke about was
The Calamity Club by Katherine Stockett. Thank you so much,
Talking next week, Thank you for.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
More from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin. Listen live
to News Talks a B from nine am Sunday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.