by Kathryn Stockett
4.4 · 5 reviewsOxford, Mississippi, 1933. Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one.
Oxford, Mississippi, 1933. Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. Now one of the unadoptable "big girls" at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, she fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford to ask her socialite sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers her sister’s seemingly charmed life is a tapestry of lies. Then, Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman running low on luck with little left to lose. When their fates—and Meg’s—converge, Charlie comes up with an audacious plan for them to take control of their lives. But in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife and women’s freedom is fragile, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences.
5 reviews
I read the ending on a train and had to hide my face. What gets me is how carefully the book earns it — nothing is handed to these women, and the smallest acts of defiance land like thunder because you understand exactly what they risk.
The prose is lovely and the setting is vivid. My hesitation is that if you've read Stockett before you can feel the architecture of it — the trio of women, the small town, the reckoning. Still enjoyed it, just didn't surprise me the way I hoped.
638 pages and I never once felt it. The plan the three of them cook up is audacious in exactly the way the title promises, and the tension of what it would cost them if anyone found out sits under every scene.
I came for Meg and stayed for Birdie Calhoun, who says the thing everyone else in Oxford is too polite to say. The Depression-era detail is done with a light hand, which I appreciated. Docking a star because Charlie's chapters took a while to find their footing for me.
Meg had me from the first page. There is something about the way the orphanage is written — not sentimental, not cruel, just honest — that made me trust the book immediately. When the three storylines finally braid together I actually put it down and walked around the kitchen for a minute. Worth the wait.