The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
‘Pride and Prejudice’ spinoff a charming homage
Do other readers, now and then, spend a fleeting moment feeling anxious for Lydia Wickham? The last we see of her she is married to a spendthrift rake; her eldest sister, Jane Bingley, will receive her, you feel sure, but it would be awkward for everyone involved if she and Wickham were to visit Pemberley.
If all of that is incomprehensible to you, then you are not one of the millions of people devoted to “Pride and Prejudice,” whether on page or screen. If, though, you nodded along, you are the prime target for “Mary B,” a charming and smart if uneven debut by Katherine J. Chen, about another of the five sisters at the heart of Jane Austen’s unsurpassable comedy of manners.
Mary is the middle Bennet sister. In “Pride and Prejudice,” her role is to embarrass her elder sisters in front of Bingley and Darcy with her self-serious attempts at the piano, while serving as an object of sport for her younger ones, Kitty and Lydia, as they fling themselves at various army officers.
In “Mary B,” she narrates herself into being. Her defining trait is her lack of beauty. But her inner life, as Chen imagines it, is exceedingly rich — a bit prim at the outset but evolving rapidly as she gains experience. Eventually she becomes what might seem inconceivable, given her origins: a lover, multiple times.
“Mary B” is a book that aims first to illuminate what it’s like to be unbeautiful, overlooked, and yet to feel love as passionately as the beautiful do. But it also hopes to refract the characters we’re sure we know so intimately from “Pride and Prejudice.”
“Mary B” is imperfect. There’s a strong hint of fan fiction to Mary’s fairly rapid trek toward a second and a third love Chen is also an erratic ventriloquist. Sometimes she finds a true Austenian pitch, but elsewhere she misses it badly.
More complicated, her readings of Austen’s characters can be weak.
Yet for all that, Mary’s narration is a heedless downhill pleasure — plush, ironic and illuminating. And indeed, it’s a compliment to say that “Mary B” fails its model in fresh, readable ways. “Pride and Prejudice” survives the rainbow of its imitators and interpreters. To pay it even fair homage, as Chen does with Mary’s story, is a triumph, since nobody could actually match Jane Austen. That is — or should be — a truth universally acknowledged.