What Books Are Similar To The Calamity Club And Worth Reading?

After finishing The Calamity Club, I needed books with the same qualities of a Southern Gothic novel that was both hilarious and incendiary – books that looked at institutions through the lens of complicated women. For a sweeping family drama that explores moral collapse on a global scale and features multiple female perspectives, The Poisonwood Bible was the perfect choice. The ambition of the novel and the various ways in which the reader can understand the Queen of the Batisses was incredible, and left me with so much to think about, particularly in terms of the novel’s female characters. Next, I read Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison. This incredibly intimate novel about a young girl’s struggle to survive in a wicked and cruel Southern household and her ultimately positive way of looking at her violent and tragic past was so like The Calamity Club in terms of The emotional truth that it revealed. Finally, The Night Watchman by camaraderie—Locating racial and legal oppression and how a community comes together to resist such erasure in order to survive—was everything I hoped it would be. Set in a small Native American community on thereservation, the stunning prose brought to life the degree of community and the ways in which a community can come together in order to locate the oppression of racial and legal kind and to resist it. In terms of why I read these three novels by three incredibly different authors, the novels all explore how the laws of a society, as well as the social customs of a society, and the ways in which so-called ‘charity’ can shape the lives of complicated women and aid in their oppression. All three novels were very good at making me uncomfortable while providing me with much to think about long after I finished reading each of them.

I’m looking for something fast and emotionally impactful after “The Calamity Club”. The following books feature women fighting against systems to support each other. The bravery and sacrifice of two sisters in war-torn France in “The Nightingale” is as impressive as the greatest moments in “The Calamity Club”. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a darker, more dystopian read but it explores women’s agency to resist against oppressive systems in just the same way that “The Calamity Club” does. Finally, a more urban, inter-connected set of women’s lives during hardship and within community is offered in “The Women of Brewster Place”. These books are as gritty and tender as the characters in “The Calamity Club” and the way in which the women support each other to resist in the face of adversity is equally as inspiring and as a result I felt braver than when I started each of them and strangely comforted by them as well – proof that you can read about hard things and still be comforted by them.

More historical stories about women? Forming unlikely alliances? Taking huge risks? I devoured these books in search of similar themes to The Calamity Club: The Lost Apothecary by Sarah J. Maas is all about a secret scheme by women, set in historical times, and I loved it for similar reasons to this book – mystery, history, and payback. While not exactly similar to this book, The setting, lonely protagonist, slow-burn of the story and revelatory ending all combined to be another emotional read for me. For older historical fiction set in the South with a focus on class, I read The Kitchen House by Kathleenikon. It was a beautifully and painfully written book about a strange, chosen family of women and their strange household. Finally, for something a bit more lyrical, I read The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It is a powerful story about slavery, memory and resistance, mostly told through character rather than plot, and included a smidgen of magical realism that stayed with me long after I finished reading.