Catherine Raynes: The Things We Never Say and The Calamity Club

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Stroud  

Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He spends his days teaching history to high schoolers, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbours, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: how is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us? 

And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence. 

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett  

Oxford, Mississippi, 1933. 

Eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. 

Ever since her beloved mother failed to come home last Christmas Eve, she’s been one of the 'unadoptable' girls at the town’s orphanage, where she fights each day to keep her wits sharp and her spirit unbowed. 

When she meets Birdie, a young woman who has come to Oxford determined to remind her socialite sister of the impoverished family she left behind, for the first time in a long while it seems someone else might care about Meg’s future. 

But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie begins to suspect her sister’s charmed life may be founded on a tapestry of lies. Then, Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman haunted by loss who has been pushed to the brink with nothing left to lose. 

Drawn together by circumstance, they find unexpected kinship among a disreputable, determined band of women. 

But in a town steeped in hypocrisy, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences… 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at me our book.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Reviewers with us This morning, killed eh morning. Have you
been heading up the Auckland Writers Festival over the last
few days.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Just one event that you're probably quite familiar with, the
Patrick Bredon Keith, which was fantastic. It was really good,
so good.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, gosh, he's an't he?

Speaker 3 (00:30):
He certainly is.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, it's ridiculous. Author of a whole series of box
He's a New Yorker writer as well. So his latest
book is called London Falling. But he wrote Say Nothing,
which is this amazing story from the troubles. He wrote
Empire of Pain, which is about the family behind the
company that made Oxyconton and contributed massively to the opioid

(00:54):
epidemic in the United States. He's written all sorts of
profiles on people like Anthony Bourdaine, Al Chapo, the head
of the Cinela cartel. He's just yeah, he's a kind
of swashed back Clark Kent style journo. A is it like, yeah,
he is, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
It was a real privilege to be with him for
the York and Right Assessful this year. But you have
two cracking reads for us to recommend this morning. So
let's begin with The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth
strad So this.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Is set in a point of time and these characters
are knowing that there's this presidential election going to happen.
I'm not terribly sure of what the outcome is in
said in America, and so there's a lot of fear.
It's for the heart of this novel and anxieties and
rage and despair. But it's set in the hometown of
a character, Artie Dan in Massachusetts Bay and he's this

(01:48):
well loved high school history teacher. He's kind, he's smart,
but when we meet him at the start of the book,
he's considering suicide and trying to work out why he's
feeling this way. He's been married to Eve for thirty years.
He has a son, Rob who's seventeen, but somehow he
feels really apart up from them, and he doesn't quite
know why. And then his friend Flossi has moved away

(02:10):
as well, and no one seems to talk to each other.
And then sort of overlaying this is a tragedy that
had happened in a car accident and seventeen year Old
rob was involved of this, and during the story, Artie
learns a secret and his entire world spins on an axis.
And it's really thought provoking and perceptive about human life

(02:33):
and what we think about. And she's exceptional as an
author at that human observation, and her novels are often
very thought provoking and perceptive, and this book has some
particularly good observations about the current state of America and
its point in history and its years. She kind of
winds that into the story and it's really fascinating.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Okay, cool, So that's the things we Never Say by
Elizabeth Strade. You've also read The Calamity Club by Catherine Stockett.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
So Catherine Stockett about ten years ago wrote a book
called The Help, and this is her next one, so
ten years later, so it's been been a while. And
this one again is set in Mississippi, in Oxford, in
a place called Oxford in nineteen thirty three, and we're
deep in depression era South, and she writes in such
a way that you feel like you're there in Mississippi,
and the historical context of what she writes or resonates,

(03:21):
and at the center of this novel is the Calamity
Club and this deeply unlikely group of females, and they
bond together to survive their society. Woman black maids, prostitutes
and ex convict to medical student, and they're all together.
And you know, this is at a time probably still
is in lots of ways where you know, the South
was often barely integrated, and this social mixing is a

(03:44):
particular achievement, you know, when society has judged that these
women should not even be in the same room together.
But the story itself is told through two different points
of view and alternates between the experiences of Bertie Calhoun,
who's unmarried and outspoken, and she arrives in Oxford to
see her sister Francis, and she's really got nothing with
her and nothing left in her life. And then there's

(04:04):
eleven year old Meg Lafleur, who's been abandoned and she's
fighting to keep her spirit and she's navigating life as
an older girl in an Orthorage orphanage. And these characters
are completely believable. It's quite dark, but it's got comedy
in there as well, and lots of hope, and there's
lots of fames, racism, sexism, mental illness, and this unethically

(04:27):
moralized government and just the failures around how women are treated.
And it's just this real reminder of you know, these
radical women who managed to get together and decide that
they will that they will not be swept under the carpet.
And she writes, writes so well, and it's such an
interesting look, and the historical context is.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Great, great, Okay, cool. So that's The Calamity Club by
Catherine Stockett. Catherine's first book The Things We Never Say
by Elizabeth strad and the details for those reads will
be up on the news Talks He'd Be website for.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
More from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live to
News Talks B from nine am Saturday, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio