Sin by any other name

Kathryn Stockett, author of the bestselling novel The Help, just released The Calamity Club (Spiegel & Grau, 656 pp.), a new story about people mistreated by polite society. Fans of her previous book might want to steer clear of this one.

In the midst of the Great Depression, Birdie, a shrewd old maid of 24, travels to Oxford, Miss., to ask her socialite sister Frances for money to help their struggling family. Frances, who married up and never looked back, feels embarrassed to find her podunk sister on her front porch. But Birdie has arrived in the nick of time. Turns out, Frances’ new husband has “the homosexuality,” and he’s up to his ears in debt.

Before her world turns upside down, Frances volunteers at the local orphanage. Birdie tags along and meets the precocious Meg. For some reason, the head of the orphanage has a particular vendetta against the 11-year-old. Birdie conspires to arrange for Meg’s adoption, but just days later a new family sweeps Meg away. Meg’s mother Charlie returns. Together, she and Birdie concoct an outrageous plan to get Meg back and save their families from poverty.

In keeping with the Southern literary tradition, the book has plenty of gritty themes. The darkest element of this story? To save her family from financial ruin, Birdie opens a brothel. As a result, we meet plenty of seedy women with foul mouths and knowledge of the prostitution industry.

The story errs by veering into a pernicious sort of feminism. Stockett depicts operating a brothel as a noble endeavor, especially since it’s an opportunity to stick it to hypocritical Christians. Despite the subject matter, Stockett isn’t explicit in her descriptions, and she portrays prostitution as a sad enterprise many women are stuck in.

Then there’s Whistler (Harper, 304 pp.) by Anne Patchett, another book from an author you’ve heard of that I can’t recommend. Daphne and her husband Jonathan notice an older man following them during their visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They learn that the gentleman is Eddie, Daphne’s long-lost stepfather whom she hasn’t seen in decades. She never understood why her mother divorced him.

The book remains fairly free of strong expletives, but it’s replete with misuses of the Lord’s name. The moral thrust of the novel, however, left me with a bad taste. Major spoiler: Eddie was gay all along. Marrying Daphne’s mother had been his ticket to a normal, picket-­fence life. She divorced him after discovering his decades-long relationship with his high school roommate.

The story never portrays Eddie as the rightful villain. We’re supposed to understand that affable Eddie was merely a victim of a time when people were actually expected to give up their selfish desires. Now in his golden years, Eddie comes to the faulty realization that he had tried to be something he was never meant to be: straight.